Latitudes
by tdinttwrt
Summary: In all the Multiverses, he had said there was only one Gallifrey. One race of Time Lords. Just the one Doctor. He was wrong.
1. Star Gazing

Chapter 1: Star Gazing

After saving Gallifrey, the Doctor takes a few victory laps then comes to a decision.

* * *

Gallifrey falls no more! The Doctor in pinstripes hadn't stopped smiling since heading off from the grand finale of the day, all thirteen of him towing Gallifrey back into existence. The muscles in his face were actually beginning to hurt from grinning. It had been a brilliant performance, by him, and him, and all the rest of him. He was strolling around the Tardis' console while she flew, humming, brushing his fingers over a control here and there, for no particular reason except he thought his ship was looking exceptionally shiny; smug, even.

All of him had an impressive sight. All those wonderful Tardises! He began singing, softly, to himself. It was an old Earth jazz standard: "All of me,why not take all of me? Can't you see, I'm no good without you." He did a little turn, tripped along a few steps on the toes of his cream-colored trainers. His volume rose. "Take my lips, I want to lose them. Take my arms, I'll never use them." He gestured expansively, pursing his lips, throwing out his arms gracefully. Gallifrey falls no more!

The Tardis was materializing. With a twist to a large black wheel on the console, he opened her doors. Slowly they swung outward, revealing a stunning blue-orange nebula. He had come to do a few victory laps around it, and enjoy the view, after saving the universe, again, thank you very much.

He walked to the doorway and sat down on the edge of his time ship, dangling his legs into deep space. The Tardis' clever shielding extended around her open doors and the Doctor, enough to protect them both from the vacuum of space, not to mention the slightly chilly 2.7 degrees Kelvin weather. Safe and cozy, he turned his attention to the majestic scene before him: the Shrestari nebula. He had meant to bring Rose here. Then they ran out of time. He picked up the old Earth song again, whistling it softly, with the lyrics still playing in his mind, more wistfully this time. _Your goodbye left me with eyes that cry. How can I go on without you?_ He was happy, but he was also raw. That whole business with the Moment looking like Rose, what had been the point of that, exactly? It was upsetting, uncalled for. Cruel, even.

Within the nebula, dark clouds of dust billowed up in seven great, connected towers of creation, glowing with thousands of newly-born stars. The view certainly helped put today in perspective. Looking at any nebula tended to give you a long view. He had seen a future self, today, talked to him, touched him, even, and they had shown one another their sonics. His future self certainly had a very large head. The Doctor had heard that having a large head was key in making it in show business, which had nothing to do with anything. He kicked his feet, up and down, and regarded his shoes. "Cream," he said. "I wore the cream. Thought I'd put on the red? But, ah!" he cried. "Of course, the wedding. It would have to be white, to marry the Queen."

Sighing, he leaned against the Tardis' door jamb, letting his head tilt against her wood, his hair falling across his forehead. Lizzie had promised there'd be wedding cake, but they had not got to that. And it was supposed to have had tiers, and a little stream running 'round it, with floating, marzipan swans. Missing cake was worth it though - he grinned, the smile he had been sporting for hours making its way back across his face. They had said "Thank you," to him. Time Lords, saying thanks, to him. Again.

He sat up straight, and frowned, and said to himself, "Am I gloating?" He quickly added, to the Tardis this time, "Don't answer that. That was a rhetorical question." He stood up, feeling restless now. He didn't want to sit here and rest on his laurels. He stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets and continued frowning. What exactly had been saved, today, and by whom? Seemed like his redemption as much or even more than Gallifrey's. Yesterday, he had been Last of the Time Lords, with a stain of mass-murder across his soul. Today, it never happened. But it had. Given the same circumstances, he knew he would make the same choices, again, if he had to, so what was he, really? The flare of a hot blue-white star caught his attention. Its newly-ignited stellar wind had blown the dust from around it, revealing a dozen sisters. The brightest ones would not live long, burning too hot for their own good.

Absent-mindedly he sifted the contents of his trans-dimensional pockets, watching the stars. An object moved into the palm of his left hand, as if on its own. Smooth, egg-shaped, of medium size. He knew what it was, though he'd forgot he had it. This particular item _would_ come to hand, right now, this evening. It was a psychic gazer, a fancy party favor at some god-awful state function Romana had dragged him to, aeons ago.

He brought the gazer from his pocket and held its small opening to one eye. The vision within moved into his mind, and took root there, as real as nearly-real can be. It was a vision of Gallifrey, long before the War. Specifically, it was a view of the Citadel as seen from the foothills of the Mountains of Solace. It had been scoped not far, really, from his family's estate, just over a nearby summit and down another vale. The vision had been taken from amidst a field of flamegrass. Copses of cadonwood trees were dotted about the hillside, leaves shimmering. It was late spring: clumps of purple arenweiss had already started to lose their petals, turning to puffballs. As he watched, one lone seedling drifted past, its brown seed held aloft on a wee tendril of fluff, pushed along by the soft, perfumed breezes the Doctor had assumed no one would ever feel again on their skin, much less him.

He'd allowed Rose to look into this, once, long ago. Just briefly. She had been getting something out of his pocket, while his hands were busy, probably hanging from a rope or a ladder over a pit of some sort or another, and, instead of a stick of chewing gum or whatever it was they needed, had clasped her fingers around this, and drawn it out. She had wondered what it was, and he had told her there was no time, he'd tell her later, and she had tucked it in the pocket of her own hoodie, then continued on saving the day. Later, in the library, safely back aboard the Tardis, he had sat upon the sofa, reading something, and she had sat as his feet, upon the rug, before a gently snapping fire. She'd brought the gazer out, and he had shown her how to relax her mind, to look into it.

He lowered the gazer and put it back in his pocket. Now that Gallifrey existed again, tucked safely in its pocket universe, he should retire this thing to a drawer somewhere and try and forget about that whole stage of his life. It might feel good, to forget. He turned his back on the stars and returned up the gangway. He walked, counter-clockwise, around his console, regarding the Tardis' time rotor at rest, a contented turquoise-sea blue glinting off the collection of polished brass and tin and glass and wires that formed the mnemonic template of her controls.

A surge of wanting overtook him. Nostalgia, and longing. He didn't want to forget: he wanted to go back. He _needed_ to go back. Back to Gallifrey. He wanted something real, not a memory, a real, living thing. He did not want to try and forget anything, any more, not if he could grasp for it instead. He wasn't supposed to go into the pocket universe where his home world nestled, but he could think of six ways, no make that seven, that it was possible to do.

The instant the thought occurred to him, the Tardis whirred a bit louder, with a heightened pitch. The Doctor patted her, smoothed his hand down a piece of a supporting strut. "Just a short trip," he said, putting on a more cheerful air than he felt. To what purpose, he couldn't say, as the Tardis certainly wasn't going to be fooled. Most likely, he was bolstering his own resolve. He was going to do it. "Maybe they, I dunno," he was moving faster now, tweaking in coordinates and flicking switches, turning the Tardis' doors shut, "perhaps throw a little reception? I did bring them all back to life," he chuffed. There was that gloating, again...ah, to hell with it. The past was the past, and he was going home. "Just pop in, have a look 'round, then pop right out again."

He deserved a do-over. He was going to get it.


	2. The Point of Jumping-Off

Chapter 2: The Point of Jumping-Off

Rose is ready to save Pete's universe and her own broken heart.

* * *

Rose zipped into her jumping jacket. Her co-workers at Torchwood said she jumped in night-club clobber, and it was sort of true. The jacket was a dazzling shade of purple-cum-indigo, all zippers and soft leather, a runway fashion of the moment, here on Pete's World. She needed something to keep her spirit up, gird herself, and her heart as she put them both on the line with the dimension cannon. Then there were the bespoke boots, the designer jeans, the oversized gold gypsy hoops, the carefully done hair and makeup. These things weren't about bravery - they were about him. Primping, daydreaming about what she would do if (when) she found him, she had fought the impulse at first but now it was a ritual. Her way of praying, she supposed, those couple of hours in the bathroom and in front of a mirror, getting ready to jump. If anyone asked her, she'd say, "No harm in lookin' smart while you save the universe, yeah?"

It was time for another go. Rose's stomach growled noisily; she had eaten nothing for twelve hours, as dimension cannon was an immensely nauseating way to travel. Both Jake and Mickey laughed, hearing the noise from across the room. She only allowed these two in with her, in the minutes before she left out on a jump. Not because they were experts, far from it, but these moments were hard on her, and her nerves wouldn't stand the engineers or, worse, medical, fussing about. She needed to focus, so she had insisted they monitor things from another room. She only wanted her two "button-pushers," as she called them. Jake because he was silly, he kept things light. Mickey because he was the only one here who knew where they came from, truly understood what she had been through. Mickey was there for another, unspoken reason: if Rose never made it back, she wanted Mickey near. It was irrational, but it's how she felt.

Pete had originally wanted them to jump together, her and Mick. But the Director of Torchwood had to finally bow to the evidence their scientists were giving them that the dimension cannon could only take one person at time. More than that, and the holes they were punching in their universe would get beyond safety parameters. Though using the words "dimension cannon" and "safe" together was problematic: this enterprise was in no way "safe", for anyone, in any number. If the sky had not been going dark they would have never risked the trauma of trans-dimensional travel. They knew it was cracking the carapace of space-time, and though, theoretically, disturbances limited below a certain threshold would naturally right themselves, they could never be sure how the cannon would perform in the field. Certainly the more jumps Rose made, the more of a statistical chance there was for something surprising to occur, and not in a good way.

Rose was well aware that the possibility of seeing her Doctor again, to touch him, hear his voice, feel the warmth of him pressed to her in the reuniting embrace she had obsessively fantasized since the day the cannon was proposed, that possibility was merely appended to their need to stop all of existence from being snuffed out like a candle-flame. This was not about her finding her lost love. It was about saving this galaxy, maybe even the entire universe, she told herself. Still, she could not stop her heart from beating wildly, or keep herself from grinning madly, eyes wide with joy, as she crouched down now on the polished concrete floor and heard Jake flicking open the safety lid on the cannon's controls.

"Oi, Annie Oakley," Mickey handed Rose an absurdly large plasma rifle. "Don't forget your gun."

"Thanks, Mick," Rose smiled, flinging the strap over her shoulder. She looked at Jake, poised at the controls, and gave one, short, nod. She was ready.

"Mind the universe while I'm gone, all right, boys—" and the flash of brilliant blue streaking light took her along with her words, toward whatever destination fate might have in store.


	3. Madman From a Box

Chapter 3: Madman From a Box

The Doctor is expecting a hero's welcome; two young ladies become unnerved.

* * *

Crossing into pocket universes made for a bumpy ride. After nine hundred plus years piloting the Tardis, the Doctor had space-legs to spare, but wriggling his ship through the maze of temporal membrane surrounding Gallifrey had done twisty things to his accessory temporal hepatic gland. It had worked itself into a froth, flooding his brain with chronotropins, which in turn were wreaking all sorts of havoc with every other gland that had anything to do with time. (And in a Time Lord, there were exactly nine.) The result was a sense of dread, interspersed with bursts of euphoria, nausea and an itch behind his left ear.

He pulled himself from the floor, massaged a sore elbow. He'd hit it on that damn stringshift tensioner, again. He glared at it, jutting out from the console, a long lever with a bulbous, hard plastic knob at just the right height for smacking one's elbow on it in rough flight. "Will you please move that bloody thing, already?" he asked the Tardis.

She glowed in response, a question.

"I don't care, anywhere it won't keep assaulting me."

Her rotor wheezed tetchily.

"Make some room! Their your controls. I tried to move it, last month, but you saw fit to put it right back the next day, and now I've banged up my elbow again. So now you decide where it goes, fine, but just MOVE IT!" He was cranky. He was nervous, that's what it was.

He turned his attention to his view screen. They had landed in a large, open plaza of stately grey marble, in the middle of the domed Citadel. There were no Gallifreyans that he could see. They must be on their way-the Guard would have most definitely monitored his landing. He expected the President herself was being summoned right now, and he contemplated waiting inside the Tardis while the Lords and Ladies of the High Council donned their formal collars and robes to come give him a hero's welcome.

But the Doctor was too antsy, too excited about standing on Gallifrey once more, to wait. He bounded down the gangway and through the door, and then he was standing in the middle of the plaza. Gallifreyan sunshine filtered down through the great curve of the dome overhead. Its span was almost invisible but for a faint, blue shimmer. Like riffles of sea-water over sand, the shimmering showed the energy and shape of the temporal shield around the Citadel. Home to technology and machinations that affected all of time and space, it was a necessary precaution to hold the Citadel one Planck-time in the future. This time-shift, so minute as to be indiscernible to even a Gallifreyan's naked time sense, was enough to protect the Time Lords from spying by other time-capable species, or potential attacks. It also provided an early-warning system for disasters, a way to press a sort of reset button, and get a Planck-time do-over, in an emergency.

The plaza was not completely empty, as he had first thought. To his right, seated upon the lowest of three stepped risers which ran the length of the room, were two Academy students, young women, in matching outfits of knee-high socks in Academy blue-and-grey tartan, sensible loafers shined to a high finish, pleated grey wool skirts and navy jumpers. They looked to be sixty, maybe seventy-five years old. They were staring, at the Tardis, and then him, and then back at the Tardis again.

He bounded over, and the girls shrank back a little. Not meaning to overwhelm them, for surely he was a celebrity to them, he stopped about two meters in front of them, and smiled. "Pardon me, I seem to have startled you, popping in like this, unannounced." The girls stared. "But I thought I'd see how you're getting on? After the Daleks?" The girls stared on, unresponsive. A thought occurred to him. He snapped his fingers. "Oh, you may not have studied me in this form! If so, that's a shame. This is a nice one, don't you think? One of my best." He swiveled his slim body in its trim brown suit, this way and that, showing off his angles. "A 'fan favorite' with the ladies." He was running off at the gob. "Right, sorry, inappropriate. Uh, could you maybe let someone know I'm here?"

"Who are you?" asked the girl to his right. She had long, straight brown hair and wide-set green eyes, a lovely face, but her expression and tone were serious, almost severe.

"I told you, I'm The Doctor. Look, you've both got matrix access there, on your readers, look me up. I'll wait."

The girl to his left, a small, pale young person with a mass of ginger curls the Doctor immediately envied picked up her reader and began poking at its screen.

The girl to the right went back to her interrogations. "Is that a Time Travel Capsule?" She pointed, rather rudely, the Doctor though, towards the incongruous blue police box in the middle of the plaza.

The Doctor turned to look at his ship, then turned back, surprised she did not recognize it. "Yes, of course it is. Older model, T-40," he blushed, "hate to say it, that does make me sound very old, doesn't it? The disguise, it's Classic Earth."

The girl to the left looked up from her reader, and meeting the eyes of the girl to the right, gave a perfunctory shake of her curls, "No," she was signaling, her search had come up empty.

The girl to the right interpreted: "I'm sorry, there's no record of anyone called 'The Doctor'."

The girl to the left spoke up."We were informed parking of TT Capsules is not allowed outside designated berthing zones."

"Plus it, and you, should be in standard livery, always, when you are either approaching or landing on Gallifrey," scolded the girl on the right. She was giving the Doctor's extravagant clothes and hair a good once-over as she said this, with an air of distaste. She turned to her schoolmate. "Truliana, I'm hopeless, I've forgot again exactly where in the TT Regs that particular topic is covered, I mean, the rules for berthing capsules. Is it Section 26?"

"No, 62, Jordnalunda," Truliana replied, shaking her red curls. "Honestly, you're hopeless. You really ought to have that remedies, you can't go through your entire first incarnation reversing integers."

Jordnalunda sighed and picked at the hem of her jumper. "They said any interventions that improve dyscalculia could also effect my enjoyment of music," she muttered.

Truliana admonished her friend, "Exams are coming up next quarter, and they'll be heavy on Fourier series applications. Where will you be without integers, then?"

Jordnalunda sniffed defensively, and tossed back her brown hair, holding her head up straight. "You know my strengths are in dynamical systems and tachyon condensation, not everyone has to be good at simple arithmetic-"

The Doctor gave an "Ahem," to remind the girls he was still standing here.

Truliana turned her scolding tone on him. "No matter what section they're in, the rules about TT Capsules on Gallifrey specifically state you, the pilot, must be in uniform, and the capsule itself in plainform, with all original manufacturer's markings and dates clearly visible. Otherwise, how could anyone check your authorisation?" Her eyes narrowed. "Or maybe that's why you're not compliant-you're trying to hide something. How do we know you haven't stolen this capsule?"

"Yes," Jordnalunda chimed in, "unauthorised use of a TT Capsule is a serious matter. Someone could get up to all sorts of things, with unsupervised access to one of those."

The Doctor stuck his index finger into his left ear, and moved the fingertip about, as if looking for something to pick at, a habit which, by the looks on Truliana and Jordalunda's faces, was somewhat revolting. He removed his finger. "Well, uh, true, but…" he tried to explain, "the Chancellor gave it to me, proper, last time I saved all your arses, thank you very much. I mean, yes, originally I stole it, but that's all chronotrons under the capsule now."

"So it is unauthorised! Who did you say you were, again?" Truliana brought her wrist communicator up to her lips and whispered something into it.

"The Doctor," he repeated. He was beginning to feel exasperated.

"Yes, you've said that," Truliana replied.

Then both girls chorused, "But Doctor who?"

The Doctor palmed his face. "Yes, exactly!" he cried, rather too loudly. " I say, don't they teach me at the Academy? I can't believe I'm not at least a seminar? Who, indeed! Saved your planet and a sack more, I did, pretty sure it was just this morning! " He had begun pacing tightly, his face going a bit red. "Gallifrey falls no more?" He made a gesture in the air as if he were ringing an invisible bell. "Ring a ding ding, anything sounding familiar?"

During this last bit the girls had stood to their feet and gathered up their readers. Now they both backed away, Jordnalunda saying, "My, look at the time, sorry but we'll have to be getting on, now."

"Classes, you know," Truliana added. She reached out and turned her friend's shoulder toward the nearest egress, then they both sped away, through the northwest exit, turning down the abutting corridor and out of view before the Doctor could think of what to say to stop them.

He looked around the plaza, silent now, still empty but for himself and his ship. "There's got to be surveillance all around here," he muttered. Turning his face to the top of the high walls around him, he twirled, looking for cameras. He whinged, in a sad voice, "Doesn't anyone care I'm here?"


	4. The Wrong One

**Chapter Four: The Wrong One**

Void was nothingness, and nothingness hurt. The pain of it didn't surprise Rose anymore, and she'd learned it hurt a little less if she didn't fight it. In her darkest places, she almost welcomed the sensations, craved them, even. They connected her to him, to her rightful universe, to hope. Masochism, that's what someone looking in from the outside might call it. But Rose would tell you it was more a deal with the devil. Torchwood insisted she'd already acquired a Void-stuff version of post-traumatic stress disorder. Every quarterly check-up, medical told her they'd like her to take prophylactic antidepressants, and she would have them duly note in their files that she was, once again, politely declining.

Today's jump had been different, because there was no pain, at least none she could recall later. Today there was none of the usual agony which comes from being torn apart at the subatomic level. Rather than rending her, the jump energy had lifted her, floated her about, like a great, warm hand. For a moment she had been a tiny Thumbelina in its palm, surrounded by a suffusing, golden light she knew instinctively was protective, was brave, was making good on a promise. Her mind had exploded with that light, and then she'd felt as if a tremendous revelation were about to unfold. And then she had blacked out.

She came back to consciousness slowly, somewhere soft and quiet. She opened her eyes. She was curled up on her side, like a child, upon a bed of velvety plants. A sweet, riffling sound of water was coming from a little ways behind her, and then the sound of a distant bell. It rang once, twice, three times, high and sweet, same as the water. Not the sound of an alarm bell, the tone was too pleasant. She got to her feet, a bit shaky, but unharmed.

She looked at where she'd landed: a collection of mostly flat boulders, carpeted with a dense mat of spongy, orange plants. Their tiny leaves had made a much nicer place to materialize than she got on most of her jumps.

She looked for the source of the sound of water and saw a stream, burbling down through the field of scattered boulders, filled with small eddying pools and underwater gardens of tall, swaying purplish-brown grass. The water itself was a brilliant blue-green and clear as glass. Copper, she thought, it was full of copper if it was that color.

Rose made a point of studying exogeology and exobiology, because she wanted to be prepared on these rare occasions when she landed somewhere other than an Earth. And this couldn't be Earth. Not with orange foliage everywhere-she looked up to see the trees crowding out a red sky overhead, and the trees, too, were a blend of orange, red and silver. Orange, purple, red and silver, and the impression of burning gold which still lingered with her, from the jump: definitely not Earth.

The bell she'd heard before sounded again. She bent down to retrieve her plasma rifle, and shouldered it. The comm on her arm panel was blinking, a rapid, green light which looked almost brown in the altered colors of this alien forest. That would be Mickey and Jake, checking up on her. She put her lips close to the receiver and answered them quietly. "Yeah, I'm in."

"You weren't responding," Mickey's voice crackled, snaking to her from another universe.

"Yeah, this jump, it was different... "

"What do you mean, different?" Mickey sounded alarmed.

"I dunno, just-it wasn't painful. That's a good thing, yeah?"

"So why didn't you check in?" Mickey wasn't going to let it go.

"Look, I'm checking in now, all right? I'm fine, everything's fine, I promise."

Jake joined the conversation. "You're saying I'm fine, that's never good."

Rose smiled. She could fool Mickey, he was always willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, to follow her lead in things. But that Jake-he had her number.

Jake's voice came back. "So do you know where you are? We're getting some pretty weird telemetry."

"Yeah, this data's shite," Mickey added.

"I'm in a pretty sort of birch wood, with a wee brook running through. You know, this reminds me of a fresh air camp Mum shipped me off to once. But...red sun, orange sky, trees are orange here as well...no, I can say for certain this isn't Surrey."

"Stop foolin', Rose. If we can't get a lock, we'll have trouble pulling you out from just this end, if anything goes wrong."

Mickey was starting to go into what Rose thought of as his "mother-goose" mode. She brushed him off. "Nothing's gonna happen to my jump-driver, I'll get out fine. And unless these minnows swimming about in this wee blue brook are shape-shifters, I'm fine as well. Not a Zygon or Clygon in sight, I swear."

"Clygons What's them?" she heard Mickey asking Jake.

Before Mickey could waste any more of this tenuous thread connecting universes, an interface that had a tendency to destabilize when over-used, Rose cheerily said, "Buzz you later, ta," and stabbed at the comm to turn it off.

During her conversation with Mickey and Jake, the distant bell had kept tolling at regular intervals, as if to mark time. She decided to head in that direction, and find out who was ringing it.

A few minutes' easy walk brought her to the forest's edge. Beyond it lay a broad, orange-silver lawn, dotted with purple, waving, creatures. No, they were people, or this planet's version of people. They were moving, in unison, in slow motion, like a dance. Rose noted they were humanoid: bipedal, upright, two legs, two arms. They appeared to have no hair on their heads, though. The purple on them were matching garments, like togas, reaching just to their knees. If they had knees. She was still too far away to be sure. She watched another three, maybe five minutes, and decided what they were doing was some meditative style of martial arts.

Again the bell sounded, once, twice, three times. Fluidly, all the people swept their arms skyward, clasped their hands together and bowed. Rose felt as if she should look over her shoulder, as they were all facing her. But she was certain she was well-hidden in shadow, behind her tree.

Their practice clearly at an end, and their red sun hanging low, the gathering broke up. In small groups or singly most headed off the field, in the direction of the impending sunset. If Rose wanted to make her presence known, now was the time.

This first moment of revealing herself was the most dangerous, on any mission, and Rose could not help but feel her heart race. But again, it wasn't as frightening as it was exciting. Here were people who might know about the Doctor, might have seen him, even spoken with him today. The jumper sent her here because the Tardis was close by, after all.

Rose stepped plainly into view, lifting her hands in the hopefully universal gesture of meaning no harm. A small group of five who had stayed talking to one another saw her. They didn't seem frightened; they came toward her. Rose walked out onto the field, to meet them halfway.

The group was composed of four women and one man. They weren't bald, they just all had very closely cropped hair, the all around. Their togas left their arms bare, knotted over one shoulder, and they did indeed all have knees. They looked completely human.

Rose guessed they were colonists. She had run across a handful of Humanian Empire settlements during her travels, on outlying planets in the Milky Way. These people could be fully human, still, or one of the myriad of human hybrids or farther evolutions.

The colonists seemed to feel they'd come close enough to their visitor, now. They stopped and stared, and waited for Rose to broach the silence. Hoping the Torchwood translator on her arm could handle whatever dialect these people had developed during their years off-Earth, Rose said, "Hello."

"Hello," the group answered, nearly in unison. Good, the translator was performing. That was a relief.

Rose broke into her standard monologue in these situations: "My name is Rose Tyler, I'm human, from Earth in an alternate universe from yours. I am armed, but I will never shoot first. self-defense. I intend to obey follow all local laws and the best of my ability while I am here. And," this was the part where she felt a wave of trepidation-would they or wouldn't they?-"I need your help."

There was no response from her impromptu greeting party. They seemed happy to simply wait and hear more. These people did exude a sense of patient, open curiosity.

Rose felt a bit of her guard go down, assured these colonists were at the least not hostile to her presence. Perhaps they had alien visitors on a regular basis? Rose pressed on. "I'm looking for a man who calls himself The Doctor. Travels through time and space in a sort of blue shed, with a blinky light on top of it, bigger on the inside. Have you seen anyone like that?"

"Bigger on the inside?" asked the male, and he sounded rather nervous about the idea. Rose felt the energy of the group shifting, becoming unsettled.

"Yeah, it's dimensionally relative. I have a device which looks for the energy types and patterns created by time travel, and it indicated he's either nearby now, or has been recently. Have you seen him?"

The shortest of the women in the group stepped forward, looking quite cross. "No one has any time travel device here," she snapped, "and you know it."

Rose said, "Sorry, but I don't. I'm not certain where 'here' is. Generally, we find the Doctor's signal on some version of Earth, but I've seen from your flora and your sky this isn't Earth. Though you are human, or a closely related species, correct?"

The natives looked at one another, blankly, one of the women shrugging.

Rose repeated her salient point. "The Doctor's ship, maybe you've heard someone say they saw it, if you haven't seen it yourself. He calls it his Tardis, and it's painted blue, with the words 'Police Box' across it, and there's a light-"

"A blinky light on top, yes, we heard you," the short woman said.

"Are you a time traveler?" one of the native women asked, breathlessly, her eyes lit with interest. Rose noticed this woman was younger, and her purple toga was tied on the opposite shoulder from the others'.

The cross woman wheeled on the younger one. "Philomarva, nothing good can come of this topic. As a novice, you must mind your sense gates, and control what you allow yourself to attend to. In fact," the woman said, turning to the others standing about, "all of you, leave now. Go home and resume your normal activities. If you are needed again, you will be asked for."

The group reluctantly obeyed, eyeing up Rose as they turned and left. The short woman barked after them, "And no gossip back in the village, do you hear me?"

The one man who had been among the group turned and nodded. Then he bowed deeply. Rose knew the type. Kiss-up. She'd had to deal with quite a few of those, back at Torchwood the past two years.

She turned her attention back to the commanding woman. The last thing Rose wanted was a fight with this planet's version of the local Sheriff, so Rose put her voice in neutral and set her tone to one of polite appeasement. "My apologies for intruding here. It's just, this man, the Doctor, he's needed back in my universe, because our stars are going out, one by one, and I think he-"

The woman held up her hand for silence, and Rose found herself obeying immediately, but wondering why she felt almost compelled to do so. It raised a red flag-Rose would have to be on guard in case they used some sort of psychic control here.

"I would like to begin at the beginning," the woman said. "You are a person with the name Rose Tyler, you are looking for a Time Lord calling himself the Doctor. You've traveled here from another dimension, you say, using that contraption strapped to your arm, I assume. You claim to be a species known as 'Human,' which you say looks like us, and you have no idea where you are. Have I apprehended you correctly?"

"Roughly, yeah," Rose answered.

"Now, let's put aside all that nonsense, and move on to actual truths. My name is Beraturclementarentia. I am the Abbess here, here being the Clostrum Memoria Primae of the Pythian Cultural Archives. I have never heard of a species called 'Human' or a place called 'Earth,' and neither had you till you made them up. Travel between dimensions is patently impossible, and you know very well why. Because, Rose Tyler, you are a Time Lady, and you hail from one of the ruling houses of the Southern hemisphere. You see, before I took my vows at the Archives, I spent three decades at the Institute for Forensic Idiolects! So don't pretend to me you're not a native Gallifreyan, not with those diphthongs. You may be attempting to hide it, but I'd know that sliding fricative anywhere!"

Rose found herself stammering, having no idea how to respond. "But, I'm not speaking Gallifreyan…"

Beraturclementarentia ignored the denial, continuing her ranting at Rose. "So, now you know that I know that you've been sent here to spy on us. Or create a diversion while someone else does. You may as well confess, save my having to drag you into Conclave to get the information." Her eyes narrowed. "And I will," she threatened. "Who sent you? Narvin? Or, perhaps this isn't the CIA at all." She stepped back from Rose a ways, as if suddenly aware she might be dangerous. "Perhaps you're not here to sow some mere dissent in our community. No, maybe you've been sent about something bigger. By someone bigger." She lunged back into Rose's personal space. "You're with the Prioress Jemorica, you're one of her heretics, aren't you!"

Rose had barely heard a word past "Beraturclementarentia," but she knew she was being accused of spying, which was always a dangerous thing, and that she had heard, and said a word that kept making her mind screech to a halt. She repeated it. "Gallifreyan?"

"Yes, with a native Southern accent, which you were too stupid to hide. So, which Southern House wove you, then? How did Jemorica recruit you? What were you promised?"

Rose shook her head. This was getting too complicated. "I told you, I'm from Earth, and you can actually travel between dimensions, I've done it, yeah? Lots. And this," Rose pointed to device on her arm, "does have a universal translator, but it's never been programmed for Gallifreyan. Nobody knows what Gallifreyan sounds like. So, I can't be-"

"I demand to know which House to send for to fetch you, and who sent you on this mission!" The Abbess stamped her foot, glowering.

"You really get off on interrupting people, don't you?" Rose asked, finally becoming cross herself. "I'm not from any house, nobody sent me, I'm not a Time Lord. I'm looking for a Time Lord, yes, but I only ever met the one. Look, if this is Gallifrey, that means you're in my past-never mind why I know that-and this is the same universe as my original, has to be, but maybe you've never heard of humans 'cause you haven't encountered us yet. And I'm not here to spy, Who'd want to spy on you lot, anyways? From what I've seen, you're some sorts of religious nuts who like interpretive dance and the colour purple. So, if you don't mind, could you maybe ring someone up who can help me?"

Beraturclementarentia pulled a thin, long device, about the size of a pencil, from a hidden pocket at her waist. She flashed it at Rose in a downward sweeping motion, then squinted at what must be a tiny readout panel along its side. She looked surprised. "You're not Gallifreyan." She looked back at Rose, with wonder, and now a little bit of real fear, as she tucked the device back away.

"You don't say?" Rose was at the end of her patience. "I told you, I'm human. You obviously don't know about us yet. Or we don't exist yet...Say, what year is this?"

"Here we only recognize time's natural, and rightful form. Here, we keep the Pythian Calendar," she said, full of self-importance. "And this is the Year of the Two-Backed Beast."

Rose couldn't help it, she burst out in titters.

"What do you find humorous in that?" the Abbess demanded.

"Don't think that translated the way you meant it," Rose said, under her breath. Then, more loudly she added, "Could you point me to the nearest town, then, where they do know how to tell time?"

"I don't suppose you'd be willing to run back along where you came from, quietly?" the Abbess asked. "This is really not good for us right now. Not good at all, you'll be quite the distraction." She said "distraction" as if it was the worst insult she could muster.

"No, I can't go. My universe and maybe this one too are in danger, and I really need the Doctor. He must be here, or someone knows where he went. So, no. Not going anywhere." And she stood her ground.

The sun was setting, sinking below the horizon now, amid a pool of molten reds and purples, the light reaching out with fingers streaked across the sky. The brilliant display was lovely, but it had begun to shine directly into Rose's eyes, making her squint. Backlit, the Abbess was quickly becoming a dark outline, her face in shadow.

In the distance, Rose saw another person approaching, walking with long, rapid strides toward them. She brought her hand up above her eyes, trying to see better against the sun.

The Abbess turned to follow Rose's gaze. "Doctor," she called, so loudly it made Rose jump, "I don't know what you heard in the village, but you are not needed here. Please go home."

Rose's heart leaped into her throat. Doctor.

But it wasn't until she could make out his features, and then in the voice she thought she'd never hear again, heard him say, "Sorry, but I hear someone's asked for a doctor, I've a duty of attendance, don't I?" that Rose knew she'd found him.

The last thing Rose saw was the Doctor, the grumpy one with the sad, blue eyes, break into a sprint. The last thing she heard was him yelling out, "Watch her, now!"

And the last thing Rose thought was, "It's the wrong one."


	5. And Don't Call Me Irving

Chapter Five: And Don't Call Me Irving

The guards of Security Station Three were intently watching the main plaza feeds. From the moment the shielding around the Citadel had sounded an intruder alert, and a time-incursion at that, all of Gallifrey security had been rushing to post. Security Station Three, nearest the plaza, had already deployed men to cover each of the four cardinal direction breezeways which led in and out. They were only waiting for word from above to move in, and apprehend.

A portly man with a round, red face and scarlet Captain's braids at his shoulders was speaking excitedly into a headset. "Dunleedy here, sir. Officers are positioned for intercept. The intruder? He's just standing about, really, since those girls ran off. Oh? Glad to hear that, sir, such an impressionable age. Wait, he's waving his arms...he's yelling something..."

Captain Dunleedy turned to a subordinate standing at attention beside him, along the bank of surveillance monitors. Aside, he said in a confidential voice, "Alert Medical we're going to need psychiatry in there too, eh, Lasselles?"

Dunleedy returned to the conversation on his headset. "Yes, sir. We can see inside of it; one of the doors is hanging open. It's blue, sir. No, the outside of it, sir, the outside is blue. The inside's stripped down to bare coral; looks quite dilapidated."

The person on the other end said something which made a look of concern roll across the Captain's face.

"Stand down? Do you think that's wise, sir?" Dunleedy queried.

The voice on the other end could be heard raising his voice to an irritated shout.

Dunleedy pulled the earpiece away from his ear and hurriedly talked into the microphone still at his lips. "Yes, sir. Of course sir. I'll give the word, sir, right away."

The communication at an end, Dunleedy ripped off his headset and hissed to Lasselles, "Call our men back."

A young man in a recruit's uniform said, "We're not going to apprehend him?"

"We're to sit tight," Dunleedy explained. "That was Coordinator Narvinectralonum himself. The Central Information Archive is taking over. He's marching here with a wing of the Presidential Vigil, right now, and needs us out of the way."

The recruit said, "Don't they need backup? Reinforcements?"

"Junior Officer Barr," Dunleedy said, "you are going to learn the hard way, or not at all, that when there's glory to be had, certainly anything which could get the President's attention, Coordinator Narvin is sure to stick his nose straight into it. And," he turned and fixed the young man with a serious eye, "if you ever come to his attention, you're best off saying 'Yes, sir!' often as possible and hope you can stay the hell out of his way."

Lasselles added, "Not always a good thing, gettin' noticed, eh?"

"Yes, sirs," replied Junior Officer Barr.

"There's a lad," said Dunleedy, approvingly.

Three men, officers they had just recalled from position in the west breezeway, came into the room, this being their regular station.

"Why were we called off?" one asked.

"Narvin's taking over," Laselles answered.

"Coordinator Narvin? Of the CIA?" another said. He poked the first man in the shoulder. "Told you, Bill, TT capsule landin' in the plaza without authorisation, got to be something involvin' one a theirs."

"Looks more like a space pirate than a Time Lord," the third newcomer chimed in.

They were looking at the intruder on the bank of monitors. He was still gesticulating, running up and down, brown coat tails flapping.

The third man spoke again, pointing. "E's got the togs," he said. "Like on that space exploration drama my wife was on about last year, true story, what was 'is name-"

"'Rebel Fleet of Rapstallon?'" the one named Bill offered.

"Yeah, that's the one."

Dunleedy turned around. "Hush, you men, the Vigil is about to enter the plaza. I want to hear."

Councilman Irving Braxiatel was racing down the West gate approach to the main plaza, trying to keep up with Coordinator Narvin and his detachment of the Presidential Vigil. Braxiatel was already winded, but he was senior official on duty this weekend, so Narvin was stuck with him.

They held for a moment, near the entrance into the plaza, probably to let the other detachments covering the other three breezeways get into place. Braxiatel had seen the scans and the intruder was unarmed, but his capsule could be a real threat.

Braxiatel could see the capsule. It was oddly liveried, meant to look like some object from another planet no doubt, but it was nothing he'd seen before. It did say "Police" on it, and "Box." Why would one put police in a box? One of the capsule doors was hanging open on its hinges, enough for Braxiatel to see a bit of the central rotor. This was definitely one of the ships from the new science fleet, but it looked like hell and was oddly lit in pulsing shades of orange, red, and aquamarine blue. Really, who lights up their control room like a disco, he wondered. Not likely to get any science done, that way.

Coordinator Narvin was having a field day, literally, with this incident. He obviously felt it a big moment for him, a chance to show off to the President, and perhaps it was. Narvin hadn't been in charge of the President's Vigil security force long; he would certainly be anxious to prove putting it under the egis of the Central Information Archive had been the right move. There were many on the High Council who felt the CIA had enough power, already, and if Narvin could be seen to save the day from some marauding renegade TT pilot, it would go a long way to shutting up his critics.

Up at the front, Narvin brought up his wrist controls and whispered into them. "Four forward, the rest assume defensive firing positions. On my mark!" Honestly, the Coordinator reminded Braxiatel of a boy with a new Rassilon Ranger play set.

"Go!" Narvin ordered.

The troops rushed in, four from each breezeway, and surrounded the intruder and his capsule. Narvin waited until the Vigil's plasma weapons were trained on the target, then confidently strode in. He lifted his wrist again, and pushed a button. The parked capsule's door swung shut with a bang and the primitive lighting fixture atop the roof went dark.

"Hey!" the intruder exclaimed.

Braxiatel came out a little ways into the plaza, stepping past the five men who had taken up defensive positions, crouched in the breezeway should the intruder make a run for it. He watched the man run to the door of the capsule and try to put something into it-a key, he guessed-but of course Narvin's controls would be overriding any attempt to open the doors again. The intruder seemed to have no fear of the Vigil or their blasters. "Let me back into my Tardis!" he called out, turning to face down the men directly before him, which happened to be Narvin's detachment.

When the man saw Coordinator Narvin, his eyes narrowed. "You!" he fairly spat. "Figures it'd be you, Narvin! Get those guns off me! What's the matter with you lot, anyhow?"

"Our forces will keep you at gunpoint until we know your identity...and intentions," the Coordinator said. "Please state your name and rank."

"My rank?"

"You piloted this capsule into the Citadel?"

"What? The Tardis? Yes, yes of course I did. Look, I was just here, not five hours ago, all of me-" He stopped, an expression of disbelief crawling across his face. Suddenly, he called out into the air over their heads, "Rassilon! Can't you come out, yourself? Coward! You were just waiting for us to leave, weren't you!"

The intruder ran a hand through his hair, obviously getting frustrated. He began rapidly pacing back and forth between the security forces who had been edging forward, pinning him in against the closed TT capsule's doors. He was looking for all the world like a caged animal.

"You're stark raving mad, Rassilon!" he howled. "You'll not implement your Final Sanction, not on my planet! Listen to me carefully-you too, Narvin-whatever you are planning," he punched a forefinger at the invisible Rassilon he seemed to think was hovering overhead, emphasising each word, "I will stop you!"

The Vigil's men were getting more than a little twitchy, and Braxiatel wasn't at all sure Narvin wouldn't give the order to shoot. Braxiatel's mind raced. This man was calling out to Rassilon, as if the ancient early Time Lord and ruler of Gallifrey were still alive. He had a new model TT capsule, a science model, designed for historical explorations. No one had ever crossed Gallifrey's own time lines before, but plans to do so were in the works...

A thought formed, just a hunch, but an exciting one. What if this man was from the time of Rassilon's rule, and had intercepted or stolen the capsule from an archaeological expedition not yet mounted, but one which would be some day? Braxiatel was an avid history buff and a collector of early Gallifreyan artefacts. He was on the board of the Peninsular Museum of Natural History, and oh! If this man was from Rassilon's era, imagine the information he'd have on potential dig sites! Braxiatel had assumed chronoarchaeology on Gallifrey was still centuries into the future. The idea he might be the planet's very first distinguished chronoarchaeologist, well, it made his heart leap.

Braxiatel sprang into the plaza and rushed right into the midst of the Vigil troops. The intruder looked surprised to see him run up to stand right before him. Braxiatel swallowed hard. Perhaps this hadn't been such a great idea-the TT capsule was thrumming. Not disabled fully, then. Braxiatel could think of a hundred and one ways, at least, to set a time ship to explode, emit radiation or other deadly things. Plus there were plasma weapons pointed at him, and Narvin was glaring daggers.

"Irving!" the intruder cried, and opened his arms. "So nice to see you again! See, this is exactly what I came back for. Good old Irving." In a confidential whisper, he continued, "Iriving, can you tell me what the hell is going on?" Then he moved as if to embrace Braxiatel, loudly declaring for all to hear, "Give us a hug then?"

Braxiatel jumped back in terror. "Don't touch me! You'll make a paradox!"

"What are you talking about? This is Gallifrey, you're my brother, Irving, and you there," he was addressing Narvin, "with the face like a sucked lemon, you're Coordinator Narvinectralonum. The intruder lifted his voice again to the imagined Rassilon, "this sort of welcoming committee makes me very suspicious that there's a slug of an ex-President crawling about somewhere close by!"

Narvin raised an eyebrow and exchanged looks with the Councilman, as if to say, this one's gone off his trolley. "Lord Braxiatel has a brother," Narvin explained, sounding now less like a military Coordinator and more like an orderly in an asylum. "But since I had to personally eject him from the Citadel not that long ago, and am having him monitored, I know what he looks like and you, you are not himself. So, if you would please stop these mendacious assertions and stop shouting at invisible Rassilons-"

"I am not mendacious!" the Doctor shot back. "But I am getting downright put out, with the lot of you, is what I am. Of all the ungrateful... And Irving, why are you with him?" He jabbed his thumb in Narvin's direction. "Don't tell me the Celestial Intervention Agency's got to you, too, now?"

Braxiatel replied, "The what?"

The Doctor hung his head down and shook it glumly. "Never thought they'd turn you, Irving," he muttered, toeing some invisible bit of debris on the ground and then kicking the imaginary thing away in irritation. Finally, he was still, and quiet. He seemed to be thinking. "Hold up a mo'... So, you're saying you really don't know who I am?" the intruder queried, looking back and forth from Narvin to Braxiatel.

In chorus, the two men answered, "No!"

"And, Rassilon's not here? Didn't get raised for the dead to, say, help fight a war with the Daleks?"

The two men looked at one another, with wide eyes, and replied again, "No!"

"The idea!" Narvin exclaimed. "War with Daleks-you're bonkers, you are!"

"Why don't they know me?" the intruder muttered. He scratched his neck. "On the way in, there was that odd skew to the d-matrix… but I'm sure I adjusted around it... But," the man's voice began rising again, working a way to another bout of shouting, no doubt, "if that skewing were the result of contragradient representation..."

The man snapped his fingers and howled out, "Eureka! Dual vector space!"

"He's shouting again," Coordinator Narvin noted with disgust.

The intruder firmly threw his arms around Braxiatel before he could stop him. "There's my hug," he crooned, rocking them back and forth. To Braxiatel's great surprise, neither winked out of existence.

"Irving, you're not you! You're another you!" The intruder finally released him, and began walking back and forth again. "Oh, this is wild, absolutely-never expected this-all of time and space and you think you know everything, have seen everything, but then, ha! Never say never, ever! Surely the multiverse is a little larger today, eh, Irving?"

"I have no idea what you're on about, and stop calling me 'Irving,'" Braxiatel said.

"All right then, AlternativeIrving. AlternativeNarvin. AlternativeGallifrey. Or, hmm... 'Gallifrey II' has a grand ring, doesn't it? Oh!" He snapped his fingers again, "Please, please tell me there's an alternate Romana! Oh, I'd love to have her back."

"President Romana will be seeing you shortly," Coordinator Narvin said, and Braxiatel knew from his tone it wouldn't be a friendly chat over a cup of tea.

"Say," the intruder said. "AlternateIrving, this brother you have here-is he ginger?"

"What's that got to do with anything?" Braxiatel sputtered.

"Just wondering, just wondering, that's all," the intruder said. "Right, then. My name's the Doctor." He put his hands in the air and grinned. "Take me to your leader."


	6. Really the Wrong One

Rose woke slowly from her second hard faint of the day. She cracked open her eyes and tried to take in her surroundings, having no immediate memory of where she might be. The walls of the room were white. She was on a table, and there was clicking overhead-a flat, glass disk, gliding up and down on a track suspended from the ceiling. Orange lights blinked on it. Must be monitoring her, as it went from her head to her hips and then back up again. What if something was wrong with your ankle, how would it know, she wondered drowsily. The disk made two polite beeps and glided to a stop.

A large, cool hand lifted her wrist, two long fingers wrapping firmly around her pulse. A familiar voice said, "Welcome back."

"Doctor?"

"That's what they call me," he answered cheerily.

That buttery sing-song Northern voice, the one she been sure she'd never hear again, it went through her like a shock wave. Her heart was beating faster. "I asked for you, but they said you weren't here…" She was struggling to get the words out past the fog in her brain. "But I saw you, walking on the field, but then… I must have passed out again," she concluded.

He gently let go of her wrist. "Woman walks into the middle of a clandestine monastic village known for its hostility to time travel, says she's looking for a time-traveling doctor; sounded worth a look." He stopped and asked, "Hold on. What do you mean 'again'? How many planets have you passed out on today?" He had picked up a tablet from a table by her head and began studying its display, scrolling through its contents with a fingertip. "Suppose it's one way to meet the locals," he added, without looking up.

Rose said, half working it out for herself as she spoke, "So you're the doctor here. Like, you're a doctor Doctor."

"Thought we established that." His brow furrowed. "Might we move on?" Now he fixed her with those blue eyes.

Rose tried to sit up. A riffle of pain shot across the back of her skull and the room went wobbly. She fell back onto an elbow.

He was behind her in a flash, bracing her against a broad shoulder to stop her from tumbling to the floor. "Woah, there. Easy now, easy." She let him guide her back down to a lying position. He was bent over her, his face so very close, his gaze intense. His eyes...they were so blue. She'd forgot just how blue they were.

"Do you know me?" she blurted.

He immediately backed away and giving a curt shake of his head took his eyes from hers. "Nope. Never seen you before in my life."

Rose was sorry to lose the contact, and tried to wrap her mind around the fact that this man saw her as a stranger. And worse, as an intruder.  
The Doctor turned and went over to a counter which ran the length of the room. He began fiddling with the lid of a large piece of equipment sitting there; Rose thought it looked like a genetic sequencer, but more compact than the ones they had in biomedics at Torchwood. He slid his tablet into a slot on the face of the machine and it began to whir softly. He suddenly said, "Why do you ask?"

"What?"

He spun around. "You asked if I knew you. Why?"

"Oh," Rose responded weakly, "It's nothing. Nevermind." She dodged his gaze and pretended to study the ceiling, buying herself time. So, he really did not know her, which meant they hadn't met yet. Rose chided herself-of course this was the past, she was on Gallifrey! Which meant this must be well before they met. Because Gallifrey was gone, long gone, when they had. Gone in the Time War.

There were protocols set by her team and herself for a possible encounter with a past Doctor. It hadn't happened before now, but basically the point was to only say as much as necessary, and to avoid mentions of key future events. Rose hoped she hadn't already said too much: this Doctor had always been a little paranoid, and she could see he was studying her, trying to figure things out. Given enough time he probably would because he was, well, the Doctor.

She thought it best to change the subject. "So, you've been scanning me. And that machine, I take it there's some of my DNA whirling about in there?"

"Just running a test."

"For something in particular? I mean, do you think there's something wrong with me?"

"Only mild dehydration. Cuppa tea will fix that."

Rose nodded. She felt composed enough to sit up again, but as soon as she did the pain in the back of head reasserted itself. She put a hand to it and rubbed, frowning.

"Headache?" he asked.

"Yeah. Not as bad as a minute ago, but yeah."

"That's the dehydration, and low blood sugar. I'll add some biscuits to that tea, soon as you can sit up to take it." The Doctor folded his arms and leaned back against his counter. "So, what brings you to Clostrom Memoria Primae?" His voice was so casual, but his body language was anything but. He was challenging her to tell him what she was hiding, who she really was and why she was here.

Ranged against the counter like he was, Rose had a full view of him. With a start that quickened her pulse again, she realized he wasn't wearing much. In fact, she had never the Doctor like this before, exposed, all arms and legs and muscles. He was beautiful. He was wearing the same purple toga the rest of the people here wore, except he'd bunched his up messily at his middle and halfway tucked it into to a pair of really, almost spectacularly, short shorts. They were purple, too, but not matching, and of some synthetic material that contrasted with the homespun look of the toga. Rose guessed he was out of uniform, and wasn't surprised. She couldn't imagine the Doctor ever taking well to any dress code.

His legs were long, muscular like an athlete, with chestnut hair curling along his shins and thighs, growing thicker as it went until it disappeared under the hem of his shorts to adorn a place Rose never imagined she'd be gawking at through thin nylon. Though goodness knows she'd imagined it enough times. God, how she had missed him. Still did...miss him, that is. The one she was looking for. Honestly, she was having trouble remembering herself why she was here, in the face of this half-naked man.

The Doctor cleared his throat and threw up an arched eyebrow. "If you're finished gawking, I said, hasn't anyone ever told you time travel's dangerous?"

Rose felt the attraction replace itself with irritation. She wasn't going to stand for a lecture. "I think I'm able to assess my own risks, thanks," she shot back.

"That primitive contraption, was on your arm, is that your idea of managed risk?" He snorted with derision.

"Look, I know it's not safe," she answered, feeling defensive. "But it's necessary, and it's the best chance we've got. I'm not sightseeing, you know, not here on holiday. We've got a very serious problem in my universe, and I need the Doctor. But not you, you're the-"

"The wrong one," he finished her sentence. "You said that before, on the field, right before you dropped like a stone."

"Yes," she answered, truthfully. She wondered how far she could or should go with this. If she told him she was a friend from his future she might gain his trust. That would be the first step towards enlisting his help. He could give her a lift, if he wanted to. The Tardis would be able to find the proper Doctor, Rose's proper Doctor, and take her straight there, Rose was certain of it. This Doctor might need to do a bit of persuading, as the Tardis wasn't keen on crossing her own timeline, but he was the Doctor and if he had to he'd certainly find a way to get it done.

The Doctor was studying her, still ranged up against his counter, his face a composed mask, arms folded in a I-can-wait-you-out-forever kind of way. He was employing a tried and true method of basic statecraft: when interrogating an enemy, go quiet. Let them stew, wait them out. Sooner or later they'll start babbling, and likely drop all sorts of tidbits of information they never meant to do.

Rose knew that trick. She wasn't going to fall for it, she would stay in control of what she shared and didn't share here. But she had to try and get him to use the Tardis for her. She made a quick decision, and spoke. "You can help me find the right one. With your Tardis. I know it's nearby."

That got no reaction.

"I mean, your Tardis, I know it's here, because that's how my dimension cannon works, it looks for and locks to the signature of your ship, wherever it is, whenever it is, in any universe. And," she continued, "I know it's the Tardis translating because you're speaking Gallifreyan and so am I, and our translators can't do that. Gallifreyan is a - nevermind, it's just, the translator's not programmed with that. Too many, uh, swirls?"

At that, he stood up from his lounging posture and started shoving things back into a set of glass-fronted cabinets. He seemed angry, now.

Whilst she was wondering exactly what she should say next, it suddenly occurred that her gauntlet was missing from her arm. "Hey!" she exclaimed, looking around the room. "Where's my equipment? The dimension cannon relay, and my comm tablet, they were on my arm."

The Doctor still ignoring her, Rose found herself the one flashing over into anger. This silent treatment was infuriating! She jumped down onto the floor, adrenaline standing her on her own two feet even if the floor was still a bit tilt-y and her eyes unfocused.

Rose continued. "How do you have a right to take my things? Oh, I bet it was that cross woman, wasn't it. That one with the ridiculously long name-"

"Beraturclementarentia," the Doctor said, turning back to face her. "And she's got your ridiculously long gun as well," he scowled.

So, he was going to start in with scolding her about her plasma rifle now, too. Figured a chance to rebuke her would be what finally got him to respond. Arrogance was evidently an innate personality trait in him as well as paranoia. Rose had thought emotional scars from the Time War were to blame, but now she wondered if he was simply an ass. "You don't approve," Rose responded, rolling her eyes. "I get it."

"Don't care what you do, really." He sniffed. "Long as you're not on my planet. Or in my house."

"This your house then?"

"Yes it is, and if you're going to be staying here, then I think we should set a few ground rules-"

"Oh, I'm not staying," Rose said. "Just as soon as your friends give me back my things I'm outta here. Unless of course, like I asked before, you're willing to help me?"

He ignored her plea again and said, "You've caused quite a stir. There's to be a Conclave tomorrow. I've been ordered to you keep until then. Besides," he pointed behind himself to the still-whirring machine on the counter, "your test results aren't done. It's in your best interest to stay."

"The hell it is," Rose countered. Then she explained, "It doesn't matter anyway: when I don't check in with my team when I'm supposed to do, they'll pull me out jump relay or no. Of course without it crossing universes stings like the devil, but they've had to do it before and if it has to happen that way again today, it will."

Rose secretly hoped very hard it would not have to happen that way. Without the cannon device operating on her side, it not only hurt more to get ripped through the Void, it was anyone's guess as to where exactly she'd land. It might be on the cushy mats inside the jump room at Torchwood. Or it might be in front of a speeding vehicle. The first time, it had luckily not been a lorry or a car, but merely a bicycle she appeared in front of. She'd been in hospital three days over that.

The Doctor shook his head. "Nobody's pulling you out of here. Can't imagine how you got past the temporal shielding in first place, to be honest. But now they think a spy has infiltrated here, there's not a chance your friends could punch through. They'll have reinforced the shields and put on more watchers."

"But," Rose said, "I'm not a spy for anyone. I've told the Abbess, I'm here on my own because we've a crisis in my universe. You're a Time Lord, you've a time ship. I really, really need your help. I'm sure you you and the Tardis can figure out how to find my Doctor, in the right time, and take me to him. Then you can retcon or hypnotize yourself, or whatever it is you do, and forget all about me."

The Doctor didn't answer, still, but Rose saw a sheen of fear draw down his features, widen his eyes. What was he afraid of? Of her? That seemed ridiculous. Of the Time Lords, then? That could be; in spite of his obviously missing his people terribly, he rarely had a good word to say about his former colleagues. Quite the opposite. Perhaps the Abbess, or her lackeys.

Rose felt an instinctual pull to reach out to him, to try and reassure him. But every signal from him screamed "stay back." A ball of frustration, hot and sharp, rose in her throat. It was a pressure, a sort of immanent, consuming pain that could only be averted by telling him everything. She felt she had to tell him who he was to her, about the stars going out in her universe, about the Him in pinstripes whom she loved so much and who loved her...

"This conversation is going nowhere," he said abruptly. "I'm going to see about that tea." He moved to the surgery's door, putting his hand on the latch. "Then I want to take this from the top. And," he warned, "I'll be asking all the questions, this time, and you'll be answering them in a straightforward manner. If that's not too much of a strain." He exited in a grand huff, letting the door slam shut behind him with a bang.

"Whatever," Rose muttered after him. She stood a moment and gathered her thoughts. Okay, so back when Gallifrey still existed, before the Time War, the Doctor hated time travel and lived in an anti-time travel village of martial-arts monks of some kind. Really, of all the secrets Rose had ever imagined hid deep in the Doctor's past, a purple toga-toting cult had never crossed her mind.

He must have ditched the Tardis, and sworn off traveling. No doubt he did not want his mates here knowing he was a Time Lord, or the extent of his previous traveling. Rose knew at this point in his life, he had regenerated several times already, and had several companions, including Sarah Jane Smith, whom Rose had met. But for whatever reason, he wanted nothing to do with that life any more. Rose guessed it was the oncoming Time War which would change that for him, and felt a pang of guilt. She really could warn him…

The urge to try and save him the pain of it was strong. No, she mustn't. And she mustn't blow his cover here, either, whatever his reasons were for maintaining it. She owed him that much. But the fact remained she just had to find a way to convince him to help her. The Tardis was here, it had to be-gaining access to it was her best hope for finding her proper Doctor. Gaining his trust now could be her universe's only hope, and she was not going to let it slip by.

She took a deep breath and followed him out the surgery door.

The Doctor fixed her tea, as promised, and he even found some biscuits. Rather nice ones, too. Homemade, sweet, tasting of something akin to cinnamon. Rose wondered if he had made them himself, but it seemed a frivolous, cloying thing to ask in the face of the palpable tension which still hung thickly between them.

The Doctor's house was one great, round room, with a thatched roof over beams soaring overhead. The surgery and two more rooms, bedroom and bath, Rose guessed, were behind closed doors arranged around the curving rear wall. There was little in the way of furniture. They had taken their tea seated on the floor, in a sort of conversation pit lined with piles of cushions of various sizes. The place was rustic, that was certain.

Looking it over, as she ate her biscuits and took big swigs of her tea, she decided he must not do his own cooking. The kitchen was nothing more than a high bench with a sink and a hot plate, and a few disarrayed shelves of mugs and jars of tea and such. She imagined they took their meals communally here, like monks on Earth.

He had put their tea things on a low wooden table down in the conversation pit, and was reclined across it from her now, watching her eat. He, evidently, had no need of tea, or biscuits. His pose was easy, lying on his side, head propped up on an arm, bare legs stretched out. It was so hard not to look at them...they really were magnificent.

She'd only ever seen his legs once before, in Kyoto. He'd been in that black Japanese robe, wearing nothing else but a pair of socks split at the big toe so that it was all by itself. For the thong on the sandals here, he had explained. Jack had made a comment about socks with sandals and fashion sense, and the Doctor had protested, "Oi, they did that in Rome, too, you know." That short, black robe he'd been wearing had a way of spreading open at the chest when he reached for things, and when he sat, cross-legged on the tatami mats they used in lieu of furniture, that robe had spread practically all the way up. And still, she had not seen as much of him as he was showing her now.

Every time her eyes traveled that direction, she yanked them back, well aware he was staring at her. She was beginning to feel unnerved to the point where she was about to make a comment on it, when he asked, bluntly, "So what is it that you want here, Rose Tyler?"

"You, but the future you. I have to find him, and take him to my universe. I'm sorry," she soothed, "I know time travel's a touchy subject here-"

He interrupted her with a short, bitter laugh.

Rose continued, "–but this is really important. Stars are going out in my universe. Not going nova, or dying naturally. And we've looked, and there's no black holes or anything normal to explain it. The stars are just disappearing. And you, the future you, you'd care. You'd want to do something about it." She took a deep breath, knowing she was treading on dangerous ground. "Maybe, if you're set against it, another Time Lord here could help?" She figured it was worth asking.

The doctor's broad hand was splayed across his bare knee, and Rose saw his fingers twitch, ever so slightly. Someone who did not know him would have missed the movement, but she didn't-it was a tell of his, something he did just before he leaped without warning from stillness into action. Always when they were facing down an enemy, and he was about to make his move, to stop some injustice dead in its tracks. Rose realized the enemy he contemplating springing upon was her.

Rose tried to fight off a rising panic. She couldn't let emotion swamp her, now. She had to focus. This man clearly didn't know her, and worse, didn't trust her. She was in a dangerous situation here. This wasn't the time to be thumbing through old memories, or looking at his legs, really long and really bare, folded right there in a tiny pair of jogging shorts.

Rose made a quick decision: her only option was to tell him everything she knew. He would know if she were holding something back. Timelines be damned, he'd have to sort it out after they got done with all this. She had to make him trust her, now.

"You dislike time travel now," she began, "but I know you've traveled a great deal in the past. And, in the future, you will again. You will come to Earth some day, and meet me. Save me, really, from these animated plastic beings that blew up my job and almost killed my boyfriend. But then you asked me to come with you, and I did. And we were together for a while, this you and-another you. You regenerated, see, when I got the Tardis' vortex inside of me and you had to save me again. Then, there was an invasion of Cybermen, and I almost fell into the Void but my dad from an alternate universe, he saved me and we got separated-you in my universe, this one, and me in another. And you said you couldn't get back to me, because the Time Lords were gone…"

Rose nervously looked at the Doctor's face, trying to guage his reaction. It was no use; his expression was hard, like a mask, revealing nothing. Rose felt she had no choice but to push on.

"I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but maybe it will make you understand why we were so close, why you traveled again… Gallifrey is going to have a war. You called it the Great Time War. A war that span every universe. Billions of people will die, including everyone on this planet. And you, my Doctor, you were alone when I met you. You were the last Time Lord, and there are things that you just can't do without the others, and getting back and forth between universes was one of them. But now, there's something really, really wrong in the universe I got stuck in, and it's disrupted things enough for me to punch through, with my jumper, but I don't think you've realized it yet. So I'm looking for you-"

Rose stopped. At some point, the Doctor had sat up, and was kneeling now, looking at her with fear again, but now that fear was laced with hatred. She gasped; she could not believe how painful it was to receive such a look, coming from that face, those eyes, blazing at her.

He said, coldly, "And who was this war with, which is going to kill everyone on Gallifrey except me?"

Rose was contemplating getting up and running for it. "The Daleks. We found one again, together, you and me, the last one, or so you thought at the time. You wanted to kill it, but it only wanted to see what sunshine was like, and then it wanted to die so we let it. We thought that was it, but then it turned out some Daleks had hidden themselves in the Void, after the war. They came back, and they had this new Emperor who was insane. But I killed them, those Daleks. I killed them all."

"How'd you do that, then?" There was that twitching in his fingers again.

"The Tardis," Rose went on, pulling her feet out from underneath herself, and folding her legs to the side, in case she really might have to leap up and make a run for it. "I broke the Tardis' console open, and looked into the heart of it. She merged with me, and then I just-reached out and killed them. Took them apart, atom by atom. It seemed ridiculously easy, at the time. I-I don't remember much. It almost killed me, I think. You had to help me, and it made you regenerate, right in front of me. That's why you don't look like you, any more. That's how I know I'm from your future…"

The doctor got up. He picked up Rose's mug and the plate her biscuits had been on and took them to his sink. He threw them in, in a gesture of frustration, so hard Rose surprised the crockery didn't smash. He gripped the edge of the sink with both hands and stayed there, his back to her so she couldn't see his face, bent over his sink. Rose thought he must be trying to calm himself down.

Tentatively, she got up and followed him, stopping halfway. "I'm sorry to blurt all that out, it's just that you have to trust me. I really need your help."

He spoke down into the sink, his tone rough and bitter."Why can't you people leave me be? Wasn't ruining my career, my reputation, forcing me to regenerate-wasn't that enough?"

"I don't know what you mean-" Rose replied.

Swiftly, like a predator falling upon its prey, he stood and turned and was on her, grabbing her by the shoulders and holding her fast, digging in with his fingers, and shouting into her face. "This ridiculous story! Surely the CIA can surely do better than this. And you, do you have any clue what those doses of artron energy they gave you to try and make me talk about alternate universes, do you have any idea what that is going to do to you? Eh?" He shook her roughly. "Must be compensating you really well," he spat. "Species-plasty, altering your cardiovascular system, even, all for this stupid story. What do you want from me? I left the Citadel! I don't work on alternate realities any more, I talk to no one, publish nothing. I'm nobody! So why? Can you really not stop until you get a public execution? Do you need me dead that badly? For what reason?"

Rose was trying not to cry. She had forgotten this side of her first Doctor, this dark streak in him, how he could be paranoid, filled with rage. She was trying not to cry, and failing. "I'm not making anything up, I'm not with whoever you think I am. I'm not."

He was boring into her eyes with his, and she got a sick sense in the back of her head, right where the pain had been previously, that he was prodding there, pushing at her mind, trying to see inside. She knew his species was supposed to have been slightly psychic. The Tardis certainly was.

He spun her around, grabbed her wrists behind her back and frog-marched her back to the conversation area.

"Let me go, you lunatic!" she spat, trying to kick back between his legs so she could hook a foot around the back of his calf and trip him, free herself.

"Sorry, but you've come into my home, my community," he answered, "and this needs settled right here, right now." He forced her down into one of the piles of stacked cushions, looming over her.

"What the hell are you doing?" Rose was beginning to panic.

He pinned her legs and hips under an impossibly strong knee, then gathered and held her wrists over her head in one hand. With the other, he reached for her left temple.

"You're insane," Rose gasped. "This is against your laws, I know it is!"

"If you're telling the truth, I apologize, in advance," he said ruefully.

And then he leaped, like a cliff diver from a great height, down toward her mind, and split its surface so cleanly and deeply that it barely left a ripple.


	7. Rose Gold

Chapter Seven: Rose Gold

He splits her cleanly, easily. She is still screaming, fighting him off, in the outer world. He expects resistance, braces himself for a fight. Instead, he bursts in effortlessly and his unwarranted momentum carries him completely off-balance. He begins tumbling, end over end. The glimpses he catches are of emptiness, empty space. This is wrong.

A Gallifreyan child would have more resistance to him than this. An agent of the Central Information Archive would be an expert. If she was an agent, he would have been met with tangles of brambles, hedge mazes woven out of spitting vipers, misleading corridors ending in ambush. Or his own personal favorite defense, one he'd perfected during his training as an acolyte of the Pythia, plunging one's attacker into a bone-cold sea and calling forth shoals of jagged-toothed _megalodon_.

Instead, he's tumbling. He's disoriented; there are no focal points in here. And he's terrified. He's never heard of this before, never been here, wherever here is. She's not an agent; he was wrong about that. But her mind isn't the unschooled, artless mind of someone without psychic ability or training, either. He's seen those: banks of colored fogs and mists, in constant motion; phrases heard and things not said but practiced in hindsight; anthropomorphized monsters and cuddly things representing emotions, regrets, passions. Memories playing on the screen of the air, with blurred edges where consciousness dropped off, stopped recording. Those things are not here.

There is nothing here. And he is tumbling.

He knows his body is panicking, in the real world. His hearts are beating, too rapidly. He can't catch his breath. _Must get out!_ He tries to grab onto his own sensations, always the easiest route back if one is lost in another's mind. His stomach cramps, clenching hard to itself, that old pain from his year buried deep in the Halls of Enlightenment, year of panic as a way of life with fear for a holiday.

 _They're coming for me. They'll make me regenerate again, take the last half of my lives. They're going to kill me._

A memory plays in the mist. It's not the woman's, it's his:

 _Son of Lungbarrow, how do you plead?_

 _It's science, you fools! Better than science, it's maths! My calculations are correct. I won't deny reality, no matter what you threaten me with. Where is your commitment to rationality? To exploration?_

 _Irrelevant. Answer the question put to you: how do you plead?_

 _There are two Gallifreys. We've a doppelganger out there, a twin I'm telling you! And the fauna and flora of our planet, they're not ours, they're from all over another place, another time – there's no cladistic relationship to explain their local evolutions. Something's gone wrong with the gateway, or the time travel capsules, I don't know, but something is very wrong! You have to listen! Everything could be shifting under our feet as we stand here!_

 _You have been found guilty of intent to incite. You will be forced to regenerate seven times, once for each act of sedition. You will be exiled from the Shining City, stripped of your credentials. Your work will be destroyed._

 _But you can't force-regenerate people! It's against the Pythian Concordats, it's a blatant misuse of the Eye. Please, you can't. Please? No, don't. No! It hurts. Please, it hurts..._

 _Study him, Lords and Ladies. Take note. That – that's how you plead._

There is something moving in the distance. He is tumbling, only half here, but he sees it from the corner of an eye. Something moving from impossibly far away, but coming, moving, coming towards him, fast. Growing. It's gold, it's a line, no, a wave, a wave of gold. It's building higher as it comes on. It's racing straight for him.

 _Help! Let me out!_

 _Shhh._

 _Who's there?_

 _Shhh. It's alright. Take my hand._

He snatches out into the emptiness and there is a soft, warm palm and then fingers lacing through his light and steady. He stills - no more tumbling. In the distance, the wave of gold has climbed higher than he can see, disappearing into distance. It's going to swamp them.

 _The wave!_

 _No, it's okay. Trust me._

He tries to turn and look at who is speaking to him, whose hand he is holding, but the wave is on them now. It hits, and he closes his eyes. He expects to die.

He is on a bed. A four-poster bed, the posts carved with roses. The bed curtains and canopy are made of fields of stars: farther fields, systems and constellations and nebulae he does not recognize. Strange…

"Better?"

She is still holding his hand. They are naked, together, on the bed, lying on their sides facing one another. It's her, this visitor who said she knew him in another universe. He studies her closely. Her eyes are gold, not quite the wave that should have carried him away, but there are hints of that in her irises, flecks sparking. Her skin is perfect, too perfect. This isn't her, it's her mind-self, her perfection, herself forever young and unblemished. Somehow he knows this is what she looked like when he first met her. And, suddenly he knows: there is no other, there are not two of him. He can't remember her, and he's had a different life, but there's no question, there's only one him, but there's two now, and that's wrong.

She squeezes his hand. Their hands are resting, hers inside his, atop his hip. "Penny for 'em?"

"What?"

"Your thoughts. Give them to me."

He realizes he is shielded tightly. The last tinnabulations of fear are still sounding in him, and it takes effort to unclench from his tight focus on it. He takes a deep breath, tries to let it go. He feels his hearts slowing. He lets her in.

"I saw," she says. "I saw what they did to you."

"Where are we? Is this your mind?"

She rolls away a little from him, and he immediately misses the warm touch of her breasts and belly against himself. She looks around overhead, lifts on her arm and looks over his side. Then she lies back down and she's against him tightly once more, and that is so, so good. "I'm not sure," she says.

"What was the gold, that wave, that light? What was that?"

"I think that was something we called Bad Wolf. It saved your life once, Doctor. I used it, or it used me...I don't remember much about it, to be honest."

"There shouldn't be two of me, Rose."

"No, I agree. Something here needs fixing. There's only one Doctor. My Doctor." She kisses him, lightly.

He knows they've kissed before. He can't remember it, though. He wishes he could.

Her eyelashes are thick and long, like a child's. She _is_ almost a child. He feels a wave of shame. They shouldn't be here together this way, without clothes, without barriers.

"What was I to you?" he asks.

"Everything."

"We did this?" He allows himself to press into her with his groin, allows himself to feel the pudgy little pad of softness and fur at the top of her legs roll against his own.

She gasps a little. Her eyes close. "No. Nothing like this. Only a kiss…"

"Why not?"

"You were afraid, I think. And ashamed."

"Yes. I would be."

"Don't seem ashamed or afraid so much, now." She smiles at him. The air around her sparks with gold. She grinds against him this time, and he is growing hard. He even imagines he can feel slick moisture sliding along the tip of his member, and knows it wouldn't take but a single shift and hitch of his hips, and he could be enveloped in her labia. He is certain she'd be wet for him.

He picks that moment to remember how they got here, is suddenly aware of how he's assaulted her and what that makes him. He is horrified.

"I'm sorry," he says, trying to back away from her. "I'm so, so sorry."

"No." She lets go of his hand, stretched between them and rises up onto her knees, kneeling beside him, over him. She seems to tower over him, belly and breasts and hair all gold. "No. I told you, I saw what they did to you, how they forced you to regenerate, over and over again. A year of regeneration sickness and pain, I saw all of it. So I know why you were terrified of me. I know what it seemed like, to you, when I show up babbling on about another universe and another you. You had every reason to suspect I was trying to get you to betray yourself, perjure yourself."

"That's no excuse."

"Of course it is."

"You're too trusting. Don't trust me, Rose. Ever."

"Nonsense."

A hard knock jolts through the bed. Rose looks up, alarmed. He joins her on his knees. Another jolt. The stars in the canopy are fading. The bed is fading away, too. A third knock bowls them over, hard, down onto their sides again, limbs splayed. He has fallen over her, is pinning her down. They're clothed.

"Brother Theodore!" Knock, knock, knock.

"Someone's at the door," he said, surprised, as if doors and people knocking on them shouldn't exist any longer. Not that he and Rose lived together inside a wave of gold, on a bed carved out of roses and stars…

The door latch hitched open, and he scrambled up. Rose was lying under him, and she was unconscious, eyes closed. Had he hurt her? He hoped to the heavens he had not. He had committed an atrocity against her, done the one most forbidden thing for an acolyte, even worse than advocating for time travel, or looking into the future without use of the Pythia: he had overpowered another's mind without permission, entered without invitation. She had been screaming, actually, trying with all her might to fight him off.

"Brother! What's going on here?" Abbess Beraturaclementarentia strode from the door to the sunken circle of his living room floor, looking down at himself and the alien visitor with a scowl.

The Doctor hung his head, and confessed. "I forced telepathic contact with her. I thought she was a spy, an agent, from the CIA." He looked up, into his Abbesses' gaping stare. "But she's not Gallifreyan. She's exactly what she says she is – a visitor from another universe. And I think, I think I know what's wrong here. Why the Pythia forbids time manipulation, why the Time Lords were so frightened of my findings, why this woman is looking for me. I have an idea about it all—"

The Abbess cut him short with a raised palm and a curt, "I know she's not Gallifreyan. Get away from her!" She hustled down into the conversation pit, crowding the Doctor out of the way. She bent over Rose and touched the unconscious woman's temple lightly with a bony middle and ring finger held together, quivering slightly.

He wondered, was the Abbess afraid of their visitor?

"You're lucky. She's still living, and her mind seems intact." The Abbess stood back up fully. "How dare you? This is going to be discussed tomorrow, at Conclave, Brother Theodore. Pack up your things; you're no longer an acolyte here, as far as I'm concerned. Since the moment we accepted you, you've been nothing but a flagrant distraction from order, flaunting the Reverences, robes askew, bare footed, fishing instead of attending to dawn rites. You can argue your case tomorrow, but for myself, I'm done with you." She climbed out of the pit and headed for the door, turning at the last moment. She pointed down to Rose. "And the woman, I'm sending Philomarva over right away to fetch her. She's obviously not safe with you! Try not to commit any further atrocities in the five minutes' time it takes her to get here." Then the Abbess archly banged out of the door and was gone.

The Doctor hesitated only a moment, looking at the door the Abbess had exited. Then he sprang down to Rose's side and scooped her up. He wouldn't try waking her. Honestly, it would be easier to be have her asleep, at least at first. Not asking questions. She did like to ask a lot of questions, and he didn't have time to answer them right now – he only had five minutes. Maybe less.

He carried her back into his medical office, laid her gently back onto the exam bed. Then he was a whirlwind, ducking out to fetch a canvas rucksack which was roomier on the inside than it really should have been, according to Pythian regulation (but who was harmed if no one was the wiser?), and returned to begin stuffing it with things he thought they might need along the way. Liquid bandages, protein gels, pain relievers, passive radiation blocker pills, water purifier tablets, heat retention pup shelter. It didn't take long; the items were already at hand, sorted and counted and easy to grab and put in the sack. He'd started getting ready for this eventuality the first night he'd spent here in his new home, the life he'd been able to cobble together for himself after his regenerations and exile. How had he always know this day would come?

He picked up his datapad last, along with an extra nuclear battery for it. The information he needed from Rose's DNA was all aboard, now it was just a matter of time to let the routines run on it. When he had written those routines, he half though himself mad – if he'd been caught by the TIme Lords he would've been executed finally and fully, not just regenerated another life or two. Again, it was eerie how he had prepared for Rose's arrival, for so many years, without knowing.

As he pulled on his rucksack – backwards, so the main pack hung in front of him and rested against his chest – he crossed back to the exam bed and gazed down at the young woman lying on it. For a moment he was overcome by a wave of tenderness and a bone-deep, abiding sense of trust in her. He had prepared for this moment, yes, but never truly expected it. He had never guessed the next chapter in the story that was the sad, painful and lonely puzzle of his life would be a young woman, would be anything like this Rose.

He turned around and hoisted her, still unconscious, onto his back, arms wrapped around his shoulders, legs around his hips. She was not heavy. It would be no trouble to get to the edge of the Noman lands, to the place of beasts. By then, she would be rousing, he guessed, and then he would explain.

He only had to stoop a little to keep her on his back, the rucksack before him helping balance her slight weight. He quickly glanced around the room. Assured he'd forgotten nothing important, he turned a loose knob on the door of a tall floor cabinet and threw it open. At the back of the cabinet the wall slowly swung away, revealing an orange-fired, dry landscape, with only two or three acolyte's homes off to the east, their windows facing away. No one would see him leave. It would take them half a day to figure out how he'd slipped away - he was sure Berenturaclementarentia had sisters spying on him all up and down the street, always had done. Philomarva was going to get blamed for it, he thought, with a twinge of remorse. The youngest and newest always had the worst of the Abbesses' rigid tempers.

He edged through the empty cabinet, and stepped onto the desert. They would have to hold their Conclave without him, or Rose. By This time tomorrow, they would have crossed the Nomans and be halfway to the Margin. Because Rose had been right: he needed to find this other him. He needed to find the Doctor.


	8. Here, We Dress for Dinner

Two of Coordinator Narvinolectrum's men were scrambling onto the Tardis' roof. Nothing vexed the Doctor more than someone mucking with his beautiful time ship. "Mind her lamp! That's an antique, that is."

"Come along, Doctor, this capsule is no longer your concern," Irving Braxiatel said.

The Vigil formed a phalanx around the Doctor and began marching him off into the labyrinth of the Citadel. Braxiatel led the pack, officious little chin pointing up proudly. _Musk-apples don't fall far from their tree, here or in my universe_ , the Doctor mused. Irving was always a bit of a tosser; but older brothers can be like that.

"Care to say where we're headed? Someone mentioned President Romana. I haven't seen her in...nevermind. Rather stick with happy memories." Then he recognized a breezeway they had just turned onto. "Oh! We're headed for the Panopticon, aren't we? _Love_ the Panopticon! Always nefarious goings-on: assignations, assassinations. For example, when I was President of the High Council-"

"Oh do shut up," Braxiatel snarked over his shoulder. Then snorted. "President of the High Council, my foot."

"But I was! It all began when some Sontarans, with the help of one of our own I'm sad to say, zapped the President right in front of me. They were framing me, you see. Even tried to have me executed! But then I turned the tables on them, yes I did. Appointed myself President, and let me tell you when I got hold of that Key of Rassilon and the Crown and downloaded the matrix of the Time Lords into my head didn't I figure out some things _then_ ," he added. "Didn't I just."

A Vigil behind him whispered to another, "Man's madder than a sack of Shebogans at the Feast of Saint Shrewsbury."

They kept marching him along, up and down hallways and stairs, until anyone who didn't have the entirety of the Citadel's blueprints committed to memory would have grown quite lost. The Doctor continued to ramble on regarding his stint as the President of Gallifrey and other stories like the time he killed a cult of vampires in the cellar, and his captors did their level best to ignore him.

Beneath his nonchalant chatter the Doctor was working things out. One thing he knew for certain: the Tardis _had_ traversed into another universe. And what's more, she'd seemed to sail right through which absolutely should not have been possible. Another thing he knew: if he could get into the Tardis' logs he could figure out how the devil she'd managed it, and then engineer a way to repeat the sequence. And _that_ meant he could get back to Rose. He might even work out a way to reach her before that wretched goodbye on a Norwegian beach. He fought down an impulse to wheel around and make a run for it, even if it meant fighting his way through the Vigil and Narvin and anyone else in his way. _One problem at a time, Doctor_ , he steadied himself. He'd have to handle this the way he always got on-focus on that one next thing you can do, and then the next, and the next. And never give up.

His thoughts were halted at the edge of a great, open shaft, ringed with a metal railing about waist-high. The shaft was perhaps fifty meters in diameter and through its center rose a gleaming tower of silver. The structure was smooth, without decoration or any apparent means of egress. "The Panopticon Spire." He couldn't help but say it with a touch of home-town pride. He went to the rail and leaned over, looking down. The base of the spire was so far off as to appear shrouded in haze. "Long way down."

"Yes, yes, it's very tall. Come away from there," Braxiatel fussed.

The Doctor walked slowly along the railing, trailing his fingers over its surface. "Long way up, too," he said, neck craning to look at the pinnacle piercing toward the Gallifreyan sky. "Think we'd best take the lift." He reached the spot he had been quietly feeling for, curved his fingers under the rail and tapped twice there.

The perception filter which he had known must be there shimmered off, revealing a gap in the rail and a gangway leading to an open doorway into the spire. Before the Vigil could stop him the Doctor dodged around Braxiatel and ran for it, Braxiatel somehow having the presence of mind to keep hard on his heels. The moment they were both inside the lift the Doctor flourished out his sonic screwdriver and the doors slid shut right in the faces of the first of the laggard Vigil. "They looked surprised, didn't they? Almost feel sorry for the boys." A pleased smirk played over the Doctor's lips. Then he scowled. "But they can take the stair."

Then he smiled again. "So, Irving, now we've some privacy, we can have a proper chat."

Braxiatel shook his head. "But we're _not_ alone. This complex is under constant surveillance. Besides, the lift is controlled from above-"

The Doctor aimed his sonic again, and made a shower of sparks rain down from the ceiling, filling the little room with the tingle of ozone and making poor Braxiatel duck. Then the hum which had been quietly present in the background went silent. "Every system has its weakness," the Doctor bragged. "Even one designed by Mighty Time Lords."

Braxiatel pinched the bridge of his nose. "That's a sonic device, isn't it? I can't believe we didn't have it off you straight away. And I know who'll get the dressing-down over it, _me_ that's who."

The Doctor clapped him on the back. "Don't feel bad, Irving. Vigil spend more time in front a mirror picking their frocks for lint than they do training. No match against an ex-President of Gallifrey like me."

"Look, important people are waiting at the top of this lift so get to the point, man. What is it that you want?"

" _My ship_ ," the Doctor said, suddenly glowering. "And I _will_ have her back. Consider yourselves warned." Then he leaned on the wall and began casually flipping his sonic with one hand, tone lightening up as fast as it had darkened. "But whilst we're waiting on that, you can tell me about this brother of yours."

"Why in harmony's name do you keep asking about my brother?"

"Because he's ratherish me. At least I think he is." The Doctor narrowed his eyes. "What's his name?" He braced himself for that painful string of ancient Gallifreyan that was half-koan, half-curse, revealed to him so long ago at the edge of the untempered schism...

"Theodore."

"Theodore?" The Doctor gaped. " _Theodore_?" he repeated. "That's, that's ridiculous is what that is!"

Braxiatel drew himself up. "It's a family name, with an august derivation. Why he got it and not me, the first-born, well-Mumsy always did show a preference for him. Oh she pretended to care for us equally, but it was obvious who was the favorite," he sniffed. "And I have no idea why I'm telling you this..."

The Doctor's eyebrow climbed. This sort of emotionalism wasn't like the Braxiatel he knew. Envious and proud, yes, but self-aware? Confessional, even? Never. So there was divergence between his world and this one. And then it dawned on him: he had not felt the unpleasant twinges which niggled at him whenever he was near himself. And he had felt nothing coming from Braxiatel, or Narvin, either. It was an interesting fact, but also unsettling. If there was a fulcrum, a stillpoint upon which a divergence hinged, he would really, really rather it _not_ be him. He filed the thought away.

"What's this Theodore look like?"

"Blue eyes, tapered chin. Blonde hair, starting to gray." Braxiatel shifted uncomfortably.

"Sounds like my first regeneration."

"Yes, Teddy was in his first, too. Now, who knows. Can we not talk about him any more?"

"But Narvin said they'd chucked him out the Citadel only recently. How could your brother have regenerated already, much less several times?"

Braxiatel's face had gone tight and pale.

The Doctor came off the wall, alarmed. "Irving, tell me, _what's Narvin done_?"

"We were assured it was a fair hearing. Some of his regenerations were revoked. We don't know how many."

The Doctor was astonished. "But forced regeneration's been illegal for two thousand years!"

Braxiatel shook his head, irritably. "Look here, I don't know what you expected from your future, but Teddy was damn lucky not to be executed. There were enough on the Council calling for it."

"You're awfully resigned to your own brother being exiled and having his lives ripped from him!"

Braxiatel bristled at the criticism. "My brother became a puppet of dark political forces, forces that desire nothing less than to tear apart our society as we know it. Close the Academy, stop all temporal research. Even collapse the Eye of Harmony! They'd have us tossed back to our own stone age. Theodore managed to stir them all up. Then there was a bombing, at the test site for the new Type-40's. Which by the way, is one reason why no one is taking your appearance here in of one of those casually! No, something had to be done, I see that now. Of course I'd rather my brother weren't made the poster boy for the whole mess, but in the CIA's defense he was warned most strongly to leave off. It was his own stubbornness what did him in!"

"Surely Theodore had nothing to do with a bombing."

"No, of course not, but he began the troubles with his Doctoral thesis: _Missing Information in a Causal Set Universe_."

"Ah." The Doctor understood instantly. "He'd worked out evidence for the multiverse."

"Yes, but his findings went beyond mere alternate realities. That would have been shocking enough, but within a year of being awarded his PhD, he began telling entire lecture halls of impressionable underclassmen that we're nothing more than a vibrational hologram of a "real" universe, a mere chap projection. That there's another Gallifrey out there, which takes precedence over us. He would have been merely fired if he hadn't gone the next step: he began appearing on any media channel that would give him the air time, insisting that if the new Origin Project were to succeed in crossing back over our own timelines, we'd collapse the whole scheme. Wink ourselves right out of existence. You can't imagine how politically charged that became."

"I understand it would have made him most unpopular. But why was that scary enough that he'd end up in Narvin's hands?"

"Why the Pythians, of course. You have to understand, Rassilon may have put them in their place in your time, but they've been making a comeback lately. So much so that some see another civil war on our horizon."

The Doctor whistled. "The Pythians, still around? Long dead and gone in my universe, they are."

"I assure you, they are very much alive, and they despise time travel as much as ever, blame it for everything. Never occurs to them that their arcane mumbo-jumbo and weird skulkings is why their hold over Gallifrey came to an end! Then Theodore's research started giving them credence, especially with our more highly educated population. Powerful people began to appear sympathetic and there were whispers... We begged Teddy to denounce the Pythia, to make a public statement explaining his calculations are only theories. But he refused, the stubborn man. By the time the Board of Regents got involved, it was too late for him. The Central Information Archive was called in-and I've told you the rest."

"Did it ever occur to you that your brother may have been right?" the Doctor growled.

"Right or wrong," Braxiatel argued, "society's not ready to hear it. The peace must be maintained."

" _Peace_? You call force regenerating people for their ideas _peace_?"

Braxiatel cast his eyes to the lift's carpeted floor, appearing chastened by the Doctor's indignation.

"I'd so like to have a look at that thesis, though," the Doctor said.

"Why?"

"Why? Because, A. the multiverse is a fact, and B. I'm from it, and, by the way, there being another Gallifrey spinning around out there was as much news to me as it is to you, so, C. I could really use your brother's help calculating how I bloody got here! I mean, the sheer quantity of gravitational infolding...the energy required to punch through, it's unimaginable, really. Of course it could be something to do with discrete values, I suppose...less entropy to send me here that into the sealed pocket I was aiming for...if entropy even exists the way we think it does, 'time's arrow controversy' and all that..."

Braxiatel shook his head vigorously. "Teddy may indeed have been onto something, and I have to admit you are making me doubt the official stance once again, but that's not the point now, is it? I warn you: when they get this lift going you'd better have a different story to tell the Council! Narvin and his bunch are more influential than ever. I promise you, if you make yourself obnoxious-"

As if on cue, the lift hummed back on and began rising.

Braxiatel looked at the ceiling, and began playing to the unseen audience likely watching them once more. "So you can drop the pretense, Doctor. The universe is a closed system, and _we_ the only Gallifrey. It's incontrovertible. Confess you stole that capsule, it's alright, we'll all understand. I for one am far more intrigued than angry, and I'm sure many others will feel the same. It's not every day we get a visitor from the time of Rassilon! In fact, I'm very much hoping you'll come home with me. I'm a bit of an antiquities buff, you see, and I'd like you to have a look at some mystery items in my personal collection. I think they're early oscillator couplings but the Peninsular Museum of Natural History's head curator _will_ insist they're cufflinks-"

The lift slid to a halt, and Braxiatel hissed one last warning in the Doctor's ear. "Your choice now, Doctor. Say you're from an alternate Gallifrey and you're sure to get a tour of one of the CIA's cupboards-cum-dungeons. Or go along with my story, and we'll go have a nice cup of tea and discuss archaeology."

The Doctor whispered back, "You make a strong point."

The doors slid open to reveal a short hallway, draped in silk curtains on all sides except for a pair of bronze doors, heavily repoussed with the Decree of Rassilon. Standing before them was a tall and regal woman with wavy chestnut hair, in a white velvet robe with the Presidential jewels clasped at her neck. "What's delayed this lift?" she intoned.

"Erm, little malfunction," Braxiatel began, but was saved from having to dissemble further when Romana lifted a hand in the air for silence, all her attention riveted on the Doctor.

To his surprise he felt her brush against his mind. She lingered long enough to get a quick snapshot of his emotional state. How the hell was she doing that? The matrix did facilitate a general sort of ability to communicate without direct touch. Those who were part of it during life, like Presidents and ex-Presidents, were to a degree of one mind. But this Romana was from a different universe. How could they be compatible in this way? He felt her react to his astonishment with an intense wave of curiosity of her own. He reached out to try and give her more information but she withdrew before he could send it.

She hid her feelings well, Romana did. Always had. With the arch of a well-shaped, glossy eyebrow she played it cool, turning to Braxiatel and asking, " _This_ is the emergency we were all called out of bed for?" she asked. Meaning the Doctor.

"Oh, isn't that classic!" The Doctor exclaimed. "Classic Romana, that is," he said to Braxiatel. Then added, "She was my first, you know. Her, right there!" He was pointing.

"I beg your pardon?" the President responded.

"Don't they have manners in your universe?" Braxiatel hissed, yanking down the Doctor's pointing hand by a jacket-sleeve.

The Doctor ducked from Braxiatel's grip and went to her, stretching out his hand. "Sorry, been told I'm rude this time around, nothing untoward intended. It's just you regenerated, you see, and anyhow, no hard feelings. Shake on it?"

She made no move to take up the proffered hand, looking confused.

"Shaking hands, it's an Earth thing," the Doctor explained. "See, I hold out my right hand, and then you grasp it with your right, and we move them up and down together. Go on, give it try."

Romana gingerly reached out and allowed the Doctor to grasp her hand, palm to palm. As he gently shook their joined hands, he reached to her with his mind. _There are other universes, and another Gallifrey. And I must have my ship back._

Romana let go of his hand, making no outward sign she'd heard him though he was fairly certain she had, and that she was amenable. And wasn't that just like _his_ Romana-open-minded, curious to a fault and utterly loyal once you had earned her trust.

She smoothly turned her attention to Braxiatel, asking, "By the by, where are my Vigil?"

A Vigilman, entirely red in the face, picked that moment to stumble into the hall through the drapery, from a door which had been hidden behind. "We're here, mum!" More straggled in after him, all panting. "We - decided - to take the stair."

"Well," said Romana, incredulously, "we'll sort that later. Council's been called out of bed and I imagine they're growing crankier by the moment. Mustn't keep them waiting." She turned quickly on a slippered foot, white Presidential cloak make an impressive swirl in her wake. The brass Panopticon outer doors swung inward to make way for her.

The Doctor gestured for Braxiatel to go in, with a small bow. "After you," he said.

Romana called over her shoulder, "Lord Braxiatel's house is barred from voting in Council-for the time being."

"Oh, sorry, old man." The Doctor patted Braxiatel on his arm. "Catch you up later?" He bounded off after the President, the Vigil following in their wake with at least the pretense of guarding him once more.

They stopped before the Council chamber's inner doors and she asked, "How shall we address you?"

"The Doctor."

"Doctor…?"

"Just 'the Doctor.'"

She looked him up and down. "Odd."

"I've been called that, too." He couldn't help but give her a soft smile. His Romana had quite the similar reaction, the first time she'd met him.

She waved a hand and the inner doors swung open. Beyond them the Doctor knew he'd need to tread lightly.

***

Braxiatel rode the lift back down. He had to find out what Narvin was up to, exactly, and make sure sure their guest did not fall into one of the man's interrogation cells.

He activated his earpiece. "Four-aught-alpha-nine," he directed it.

On the fifth beep a young woman answered, her voice high and sweet but dripping with boredom. She recited, with a complete lack of enthusiasm, "It's a great night at Cardinal Vitello's office, we appreciate you, this is Selena Hobstoxel, how can I be of assistance."

"Selena, it's Lord Braxiatel."

"Braxy!" Her tone brightened considerably. "Say, are you on this mystery visitor thing?"

"Yes, I've just escorted him to the Panopticon."

"Bonzo!"

Braxiatel heard a large pop over the connexion. "You're not chewing gum whilst on duty, are you?"

"Oh, what? No. No, of course not."

Brax was sure he heard the ting of a piece of gum hitting a dust bin. Selena was the niece of his second cousin, and Braxiatel had finagled this position for her at her mother's request. It was only the night shift, which was good because she was, frankly, an idiot. But the appointment gave Braxiatel an entree to the inner workings of the Cardinal's office; look how well it had worked out tonight. You never knew when you might need loyal people in the right place at the right time.

"I've rung because I need your help most urgently."

"Sure," she said. "Can do, Uncle Braxy. Oh, but the Cardinal's up at the Panopticon too by now."

"That's alright, if you could please ring up his earpiece. I'd do it myself, but he's sure to have it silenced to emergencies only. But I need to get him a message-the future of Gallifreyan archaeology hangs in the balance."

"Oh, s'that all?" she said, sounding disappointed.

Selena was the last person he would tell regarding what was actually going on with their visitor. She was sure to spread every last thing he said, and perhaps embellish to boot, across the chat the moment he rang off. So he gave her a little misdirection to spread around: let her start a rumor that his interest in the Doctor was some boring, academic thing. Nothing to see here, move along. "Yes, well, please tell Cardinal Vitello that our intruder is entirely harmless and that I'd like him sent home with me. We can look after him properly whilst the inquest is on. I'll take full responsibility."

"Ooo, Narvin's not gonna like that. You should hear the chatter on the comms. Every CIA down to the washroom engineers are buzzing. Finally got themselves summat to do, they're thinking."

"The CIA will find themselves not wanted this time. Our intruder's nothing but a stowaway, a joyrider. Grant you, he's made quite the dramatic entrance, but the capsule he stole is clearly the purview of the Academy and none of Narvinolectrum's concern. The Council will certainly agree-Project Origin is a scientific venture, not a military one. Now run along, and tell the good Cardinal what I've said. You can't imagine the opportunity for study this man represents. He must be handled properly, by trained historians."

"Sure, Braxy, I totally feel you, I'm right on it. But hey, please please please, take a selfie with 'im, yeah? I heard he's the spitting image of the pirate Lord off ''Rebel Fleet of Rapstallon, got the long coat and everything-'"

"Sorry," Braxiatel interrupted, "must dash," and then he hung up on her.

Time to make a visit to Security Station Three. The Captain on duty tonight, Dunleedy, owed Braxiatel a favor from a few years back. He needed the man to back up the story he was weaving about the Doctor being from their past, whether it was true or not. And he absolutely needed that TT capsule back in the hands of the Academy not under Narvin's lock and key. The Doctor was desperate to get back inside and Braxiatel was determined to find out why, apart from the more obvious reason of wanting to be on his way again. There was a deeper motivation there, Braxiatel was sure of it.

The hunch he had repressed for so long suddenly returned to him, and he felt the hair on his arms stand on end. Teddy had been onto something. What's more, it was looking like the CIA might have known it! Why else would they be so afraid? The Doctor was right: it didn't make sense to halfway kill a man over some mere physics and maths. Yes, he needed access to that capsule, and a chance to talk to the Doctor at length, privately, and preferably inside that time ship, together.

Braxiatel rubbed his hands together and picked up his pace through the corridors. In one night he'd gained a chance to bring Teddy out of exile, clear the Lungbarrow family name, and put Narvinolectrum back in his place.

He smiled and said softly to himself, "It's like Omega Day, come early."

***

"As I've explained," the Doctor repeated for the dozenth time, "I'd no idea what I was looking at. Pushed a wrong button, I suppose-though in my defense it was a big, blue and blinking button. But tell you what, you let me back into that capsule and I'll just push that same button again, and I'll bet my socks, I'll toddle off right back the way I came and ouila, problem solved. All the wee Time Lords back snug in their beds, visions of cosmic domination dancing in your-"

A balding man with an imposing set of eyebrows interrupted from the East gallery. "But you stole our technology, sir. Access to time travel is restricted! You must be debriefed!"

"Yes," agreed a narrow, sly-looking man behind him. "I've seen the initial summaries. The TT capsule is in a horrendous state. Bizarre alterations have been made. It's reportedly been lit up like a disco, and all the controls have been replaced by a raft of junk. This man absolutely cannot be allowed back inside to cause more damage."

"Alright, okay" the Doctor said, turning to address all sides. "I'm a rubbish decorator. But that console, in my defense, was designed for a crew of nine."

"How does he know that?" A shrill voice came from the Western benches. "Crew size in the Type-40 is classified information! This man is a clear and present security risk. I also insist he be given over to the CIA for debriefing immediately, so we can find out who exactly is behind all this!"

"Why do you people want to take my pants? And how do you know they're briefs?" the Doctor quipped, trying to interject some levity. Council sessions were so bloody _dull_. "And hold up, why do you think I'm working for someone else?" he added, feeling a little offended at the implication.

"You simply _cannot_ have burgled such a sophisticated machine all on your own, young man," she said.

"Oh, but I did," the Doctor said, truthfully, and smiled to himself. "Though I was rather older and probably wiser at the time…"

Cardinal Vitello, Chancellor of the Academy rose from his place of honor at the President's right hand. "Lady Cleotura, not everything which happens on Gallifrey is a military threat though I understand why you and the other members of your House might wish it were-how very lucrative that would be for you, yes?"

The Lady huffed and sat down, red-faced. The Cardinal continued. "The Academy oversees the Origin Project, including the details of the Type-40. Which, I must point out, are not 'classified' in any military sense of the word, but merely under wraps until we've done with testing, so as not to subject our scientists' efforts to public scrutiny and argument. The last thing needed is the CIA sticking its nose in. I've read the initial reports as well and this strange man," he went on, motioning to the Doctor, "is nothing more than a misguided hobbyist of some sort, on a joyride through time. He may be a thief, but in my estimation he's a threat to no one but perhaps himself."

So it was to be insults from every quarter, eh? And the lines of conflict were obvious: scientists versus soldiers. A multiversal constant? But at least here, on this Gallifrey, the Academy was not already co-opted and overrun by the CIA. It wasn't even properly called the CIA here. On his Gallifrey, it was the Celestial Intelligence Agency. Here, the Central Information Archive, a far more benign name at least. Perhaps these Time Lords weren't bent on universal domination, as they had been in his world (no matter what they claimed to be about). Perhaps this universe was spared the their meddling in cause and effect. Which meant the Great Time War might not be inevitable here. Which was very, very interesting...

A stony-faced man rose from the Eastern back bench. "The House of Brightwithers senses the hand of the New Pythians behind this intrusion. You have to ask yourselves, who would want to sabotage the Origin Project? It's quite clear to me which Houses might benefit from this disruption!"

Comments of "Here come the conspiracy theories again," and, "Brighthwithers'll have us to civil war before they're satisfied," rippled across the benches until Romana had to bang her gavel. "Order! I will have order."

Narvin chose this moment to rise and speak. "This intruder," he pointed at the Doctor, "with his nonchalant air and flamboyant attire appears harmless. Even charming, I suppose, to some of our more liberal members. But I tell you, his appearance in our Citadel is nothing less than the latest move in a sinister game we know all too well. A game being played by those who would destroy our very way of life. How can I know this? Because, Lords and Ladies, this intruder, this _terrorist_ , is an out and out liar! When we first apprehended him, there was no talk of joyriding or of being from an earlier time. No, dear citizens. This very person announced to us all that he was," and here Narvin paused for effect, "a traveler from an alternate universe." He looked around the chamber to gauge the results of his words. Many were shifting uncomfortably in their chairs. "What's more, _he declared himself a Time Lord from an alternate Gallifrey_!"

The room broke into absolute cacophony. Romana banged her gavel again and again but it took a full three minutes for the assembly to settle down enough for anyone to hear her. When order was finally restored, she spoke. "Coordinator, you have other witnesses to this?"

"The night duty from Security Station Three were present-they will have clearly heard the same statements and can corroborate. Madame, I must insist the Central Information Archive be allowed to to take control of this Doctor person. Lady Cleotura is right-we must determine who his masters are! Though I have my own suspicions on that count." With that last statement he fixed President Romana with a dark stare.

Cardinal Vitello rose to her defense. "We've seen the results of your CIA interrogations before, Coordinator. There's the inevitable and thus highly questionable confession, after which the subject is shoved blinking back into the sunlight with half their mind sucked away. No, Coordinator, if you wish to deploy such tactics you'll need better evidence than this man's deluded ravings. For he is deluded, is he not?" He appealed to the Council members. "Lords and Ladies, why would the Commander and his supporters take the idea of an alternate Gallifrey so seriously? After all we have been through, as a society, I thought the matter quite settled. It was my understanding we'd all agreed the multiverse is impossible." He fixed Narvin with a steady stare. "What need is there, then, for you to be so…" he reached for the right word, then found it, " _reactive_ , Sir?"

Narvin seemed left without response, thrown by the Cardinal's logic.

Vitello continued. "If this Doctor is, as he insists, from our past-and what other possible explanation is there-then he's no threat. What would he know of our political troubles? What possible motive could he have to put himself at risk by landing in our midst? It's irksome I'm sure to all of us involved with the Origin Project that he's jumped ahead of our plans but I think we'll eventually admit this was a happy accident. Best laid plans professors and engineers, eh?" Many people tittered at that, the mood in room growing lighter. "You are, sir," he addressed the Doctor, "not from an alternate Gallifrey are you?"

"No, of course not." the Doctor agreed. "I mean, if you all say it's impossible, you should know. I'm just a hobbyist, as you say, a time travel enthusiast. Back when I'm from it's not even a reality-it's still just a theory! I'm sorry I made all that nonsense up, about the other universe and such. I suppose I panicked. Only meant have a look 'round inside that capsule while its crew was out doing whatever they were doing. They left the door ajar, you see, and I know, I know, I shouldn't have peeked in, much less gone inside and started pressing buttons-again, terribly sorry. But I'm here now, and I mean to be entirely on the up and up from here onwards. I hope you're not too sore. But just imagine you're me, yeah?, and this frankly magnificent timeship (good on you all for that!) materializes and I tell myself I'll just have a little looksee, and then _it's bigger on the inside_ -can you imagine my astonishment!-and then I said to myself, I said, 'Doctor, you'll never get a chance like this again-'"

"Thank you, Doctor, but we've no need to hear all the details right now," Romana interrupted. "I would rather sum up and get us all back to our normal routines, and I'm sure all our present Council members concur with that sentiment. Just to be certain we're putting any talk of conspiracy and the Pythia and the recent unpleasantness regarding the House of Lungbarrow to rest, Lady Cleotura, Coordinator Narvinolectrum, and all those who have spoken their concerns: do you agree to this Doctor being safely remanded for the time being, at least, to the oversight of Cardinal Vitello and such members of the Academy as he sees fit to appoint to the task?"

"I most certainly do not!" Narvin sputtered.

"Nor I," said Lady Cleotura and there was a scattered response of "Here, here!" from perhaps a dozen other members.

Romana asked, "What then, short of having him jailed-which I absolutely refuse to entertain at this time due to a complete lack of evidence warranting such a move-would you have me do?"

A Lady from the West's front row, venerable and withered, struggled to get up, leaning upon a heavily bejeweled staff. Her voice was hoarse and faint, but her presence carried with it a malice the Doctor instantly found chilling. And riveting. The chamber grew silent as they strained to hear her. "The wretched serpent of the Pythia will ever grow a new head as fast as we cut them off. The Lungbarrow boy was allowed to go live with their Abbess and now see how our leniency is repaid. I've had enough of mercy. Round them all up, I say, all the Lungbarrows and their sympathizers, before they can do us any more harm." She sat down again. A tense silence filled the room.

President Romana chose to break it by laughing out loud. "Goodness, me!" she chortled. She wiped her eyes after a moment's apparent merriment. "Sorry, it's not my intent to treat any opinion here lightly. But really, Lady Vencellexia, though you are one of our most august members and I'm sure your heart is in the right place, you can't possibly be suggesting we toss every last Lungbarrow _and_ anyone they consort with into detention, and hold them there indefinitely, without charge?"

"I don't see where that would be a bad idea, in light of these events," Narvin jumped in, presuming to answer for the old lady.

"Let's put it to the vote, then," Romana purred. She picked up the Rod of Rassilon, symbol of her ultimate authority over the Panopticon and the secrets buried beneath it, and recited, "In accordance with the Laws of Time and by the vows you hold to defend them, all those wishing to immediately detain everyone known to have been sympathetic to the Lord Theodore, all the members of his house and all those who have ever voiced concerns about the safety of using time technology, please rise." She turned to the Vigilman stationed just behind her chair, saying for all to hear, "Best stand by, Lieutenant. The group of people to be arrested would include myself, of course, and Cardinal Vitello, the entire West bench, most of the South and oh, I'm sure we can think of more. You may be about to become very busy!"

Nobody stood, not even Lady Cleotura, to join Narvin. He sat down again, fuming.

"Right, then. Moving on." Romana put the Rod back upon its ceremonial stand. The Doctor, and perhaps only the Doctor, was aware that her hands were shaking. Her voice perfectly light, Romana continued. "Cardinal Vitello, since Lady Vencellexia's motion hasn't carried, as Chancellor of the Academy and overseer of the Origin Project, would you like to put forward a motion?"

The Cardinal cleared his throat, and stood. "Again, I believe this visitor presents us with an unprecedented opportunity to study our own past. We need our top, trained historians and archaeologists to handle his questioning, lest he hear things he mustn't or have his own memories contaminated. There is a danger here, it's theoretical but still it must be taken seriously, of causing a temporal feedback wave via the very act of questioning him. Though some here seem ready to have him tarred and feathered for nothing more than loving his younger brother, the Academy's Lord Irving Braxiatel is the leading authority on protocols for first contacts in the Origin Project. I move that there is no better, safer resolution than to remand the Doctor to his care, and the oversight of the Board of Directors of the Peninsular Museum of Natural History. Lord Braxiatel's facilities within the Lungbarrow estate are perfectly suited for the careful debriefing of our guest. A debriefing which, I will personally see to it, is both transparent and safe for us and the Doctor."

Romana rose in support and said, "All those in favor of the Cardinal's recommendation, and who might like to have us learn something from this rather than using it to jail half of Gallifrey, please stand."

Just over two thirds of the room rose, though some did so tentatively, glancing warily in Narvin's direction.

"That's settled then," Romana concluded. She was just about to sit down and bang the gavel to close the hearing when the Doctor piped up.

"Don't I get to say what I think we should do? I mean, since this is about me it's only natural I might have an opinion?"

"I can't wait to hear this," Narvin sneered.

"Go ahead, Doctor," Romana directed. "Speak your final peace."

"While you've been debating, it's occurred to me that I may have left the stove on in that stolen capsule. I had put on the kettle, you see, right before landing here and if you don't mind, I really think I should go back and have a look. You'll not find it, I moved the galley around and well, it would be so much easier if I popped over and put all our minds at ease. That hob's temperamental, and...No?" He reached up and scratched the back of his neck. "Suppose not…was worth a try."

"It is the decision of this Council and its reigning President that you are to be remanded to the custody and care of Lord Braxiatel and Cardinal Vitello, under the auspices of the Board of Regents of the Academy and the Directorship of the Peninsular Museum of Natural History. Your movements shall be confined to the grounds of the Lungbarrow Estate and the Museum, and to such conveyances needed to transport you between those locations as well as any and all commanded appearances here in the Citadel before this and other official bodies of inquiry, until such time as a final determination is made in your case and a judgement is entered regarding your final disposal."

"Disposal? Don't like the sound of that," the Doctor muttered.

"Pardon?" Romana asked.

He spoke up. "How long until I'm free, exactly?"

"We shall begin nominations for a panel of Special Inquiry immediately. Once elected, they will determine an exact timeline, but let me think…" She looked to the ceiling and counted on her long, elegant fingers. "There's the evidentiary convocations, that's perhaps four months' time, then the drafting of preliminary findings, followed of course by a debate in Council on the admissibility of contended items, should there be any-which I'm sure there will-"

"Yes, I'm sure there will, too," the Doctor glowered.

"Then revisions and that brings us up to, what do you think, Cardinal, nine months?"

The Cardinal nodded.

"Nine months. From there, similar inquests generally take only a year or two. If there's no challenges which push the matter to the Appellate, you should have a final disposition of the matter well within three years' time. It's never our intention to keep anyone's movements restricted longer than necessary."

"No, of course not," the Doctor said, trying his level best to keep the sarcasm from his voice. He needed this Romana as an ally-it wouldn't do to vex her unnecessarily. He reminded himself he was in this to win the war, not spend his welcome fighting this mere opening skirmish. He forced himself to drain the tension from his body, breathing himself into a state of apparent pliance and tranquility. "Excellent then, thank you, madame, Lords and Ladies. I completely understand. Big hairy mystery, me, so I totally agree. Can't wait for the Discovery phase, though! Say, can I have anyone I like for a barrister? Might be a problem, though, retaining someone-no money here, no people of my own."

"Someone agreeable to you will be appointed, free of charge," a man sporting a jabot and a bench wig in addition to the usual Lordly attire spoke up.

Before the Doctor could pose further questions, Romana brought down her gavel a final time. "This assembly is hereby adjourned." Muttering, gossiping Time Lords and Ladies filed out of the room, some of them removing their high stiff collars before they'd finished getting out the door.

***

"So, that's all settled, then," Braxiatel declared. He and the Doctor had been escorted to a South-facing transport platform. The night air was warm and dry and fragrant in a way the Doctor remembered in his very cells, memories of Gallifrey carried on even into this regeneration, even after its destruction.

"It will be close to supper time when we arrive. We'll eat, get a good night's rest, then tomorrow we can begin. I think we should start with a battery of standard typing-cheek swabs, perhaps a bit of spinal fluid."

"Come again?" the Doctor asked, alarmed.

"Well aren't you at all curious to see how homologous you are to us? Whether you're from our past or another universe, I'd surely like to know how your genetics compare to ours. I mean, the idea of little Lungbarrows running about somewhere in another dimension..."

The Doctor laid a finger alongside his nose, looking concerned.

"Don't fret," Braxiatel assured him. "It's too windy up here for electronic ears to pick up our conversation. In the car though we'll need to stick to benign topics. But on the Estate, I assure you we'll have places for real privacy. That's the main reason I wanted you there."

The Doctor decided to let his status as a potential science experiment ride, for now. When Brax started coming after him with needles, they'd have another talk then. "You said 'the car'. Exactly what type of conveyance are we expecting?"

"Grand-Maman's sending the curricle. Told her you'd not been South before, and it's best to leave the explanations there, if you don't mind. Grand-Maman tends to get...exercised. For want of a better word. And you can understand that this business with the CIA calling for our heads would be deeply upsetting to her, in light of what's happened to Theodore. So please, let's keep the conversations to archaeology. I've told her you're a visiting lecturer on benthic excavation techniques, and that's all she need know."

"Understood," the Doctor agreed.

"I think you'll enjoy riding in the curricle. Best way to see the sights as we pass over-it seats you sideways, with an excellent view. Should have a lovely sunrise; we'll be over the Arbothin Sea then, I believe."

The two men stood quietly in the darkness and the Doctor studied the stars. There was little difference from the sky he knew as a young man, as a boy. A nebula or two off a few degrees, perhaps, and that star should be a double system but wasn't. But mostly everything appeared familiar, comfortable. The night breeze was lulling him into a real sense of ease, a gust occasionally picking up the tails of his topcoat and snapping them lightly.

He realized Brax was studying him closely, roving over the Doctor's attire now with a somewhat disapproving eye.

"What?" the Doctor asked. "Something amiss? Spot on my tie?"

"You've only these clothes, then," Brax said, looking as if he smelled something bad.

"I've certainly other outfits, but someone's shanghaied my Tardis haven't they? Hard to get to the wardrobe if I don't know where it is. So yes, I suppose this is me now, for better or worse."

Braxiatel rocked back on his heels, stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Well, the valet can something out for you, I'm sure. You're quite thinner than most of us Lungbarrow men, but it's always easier to take in than let out."

"What, exactly, is wrong with my kit?"

"At Lungbarrow, we _dress_ for dinner," Braxiatel said. As if it were the most obvious thing in the world to a civilized man.

The Doctor sighed inwardly. One more outrage to add to all the rest, this one taking the form of an imminent white bowtie. Forget the high-waisted trousers and starched shirt, they were going to try and take his trainers, too, he was sure of it. Why did he keep having to put on tuxedos, from one misadventure to the next?

A sleek little transport appeared on the horizon, and a few moments later it was docked at the platform's edge. The side which faced them was a large piece of curved, seamless glass, which turned out to be the hatchway. It raised and they stepped into the small cabin. The Doctor sat down in one of four outward-facing, butter-soft reclining seats. "Mosey on, then," he said cheerfully enough under the circumstances.

"Mosey?" Braxiatel sat down as well, leaving an empty spot between himself and the Doctor.

"'Mosey' - it's an Earth thing. Cowboys say it. When they're out punching cows."

Braxiatel seemed about to ask another question in the same vein, then shook his head. He pulled a control pad from a pocket on the wall to his left and as he punched in commands asked,"What's this 'Earth' you keep mentioning? Some sort of fad from Rassilon's day?"

The Doctor hadn't seen this one coming. Now this-this was divergence! He couldn't tell Braxiatel the truth, not with electronic eyes and ears on them here in the curricle, as they undoubtedly were. "Oh, just a little planet I like to hop to for a holiday. Inconsequential place, really, but they do fry up these starchy bits of tuber in hot fat and then salt them and serve them with vinegar in paper sacks. Lovely things. Oh, and cows, those are these domesticated animals they extract mammary secretions from. Sweet and creamy; it's better than it sounds, I swear. And, oh, they have edible ball bearings. Can you imagine? Edible ball bearings!"

"So you just go there to eat?" Braxiatel ventured, but the Doctor was kept from answering by a projection flickering onto the glass wall in front of them.

An impossibly fit man in a cheery and impossibly tight canary yellow flight suit waved to them. "Good evening, gentlemen!" he enthused. "Welcome aboard!"

"Autopilot," Braxiatel explained in an aside to the Doctor. "Good evening, Lawrence," he addressed the image. "Lungbarrow Estate, please, central platform. Authorization Braxiatel four-zed-zed-delta-six."

The automated image pretended to do some calculations on a virtual smart watch and smiled. "Your flight duration will be approximately three hours and forty-four minutes. May I offer you a snack or beverage?"

"No," Braxiatel began.

But the Doctor said, "Bit of both, please." Then to Braxiatel added, "Peckish. Traveling across time will do that to you."

"And what are the gentleman having this evening?"

"I dunno...hmm, let me think...I'm sorry, Larry, was it?"

"Lawrence, sir, but you are welcome to call me Larry if it pleases you."

"No, no, Lawrence is a fine name. So, about the nibbles...hmm...what do you suggest, Larry?"

"We have some delicious Rennet torte on board, topped with a caramel crunch."

"No, no, that won't do. Not in the mood for sweets, really. And that sounds awfully like something do with a sheep's stomach. Tell you what, why don't you mix me up a good, strong Manhattan and I'll take anything you've got as long as it's salty, on the side. Nuts. Caviar? Or pickled green beans, those are so good, aren't they?"

"I'll do my best, sir. And, my deepest apologies, but might you direct me as to the ingredients and procedures for making a Straw Man's Hatten?"

The Doctor opened his mouth to reply, but Braxiatel cut in. "He'll have a gin and tonic."

"I will? Oh whatever. Gin and tonic's fine," he said, giving Braxiatel a sulky look.

"Very well, sir." The image flickered away.

"Are you quite finished?" Braxiatel asked.

The drink and a bowl of assorted crunchy nibbles lowered down on a handy table before the Doctor, from the curricle's ceiling. "That's impressive," he said. "And to answer your question, I'm nowhere near finished." He lifted his attractive crystal highball glass, fizzing with tiny bubbles and floating a wafer thin slice of lime and took a sip as the curricle lifted into the air and began to sail off. Into the drink he murmured, "I'm just getting started."

A likely unwise number of gin and tonics later, the Doctor saw the sunrise Brax had promised. It was just the one sun, today-not the season where the system's dimmer, farther twin would rise in tandem with its closer, hotter brother. This main sun was white, Class F. If this Gallifrey's cosmic history was like his, it should have burned over to a yellow Class G, like the Earth's sun by now, but was kept from doing so through a periodic infusion of hydrogen by a means which he never could quite grasp at the Academy, to the repeated frustration of his Stellar Evolution tutors. Without its paired red dwarf it gave the sea below them a blue cast as it climbed into the sky, the other star seeming to malinger an hour or two behind. As on most circumbinary planets, Gallifrey rarely experienced a twin sunrise. In the days of the Pythia, he recalled, such an event was considered sacred. He wondered exactly what was going on here, with the Pythia still a force to reckon with, and what it meant.

By the time they crossed the foothills of the Mountains of Solace, the Doctor had nodded off, joining Brax who had been hard asleep (and lightly snoring) since just past takeoff.

So it was through a haze of dreams, something about running but his trainers being stuck to the ground, that he heard the curricle lock into a landing dock. And it was through bleary eyes saw the glass hatchway start to raise up.

It only took an instant for his autonomic nervous system to pump out a quantity of noradrenaline sufficient to kill most hominid species, because what he saw, backlit and in mere outline was still so unmistakable there could be nothing else like it. In any universe. The Doctor jumped up on top of the seat, frantically looking back behind it with the intent of leaping over and trying to hide. As if that would accomplish anything beyond buying him another millisecond.

The thing fixed him with a glowing blue eyestalk and then that horrible mechanical voice rang out, a voice which must be the background music for Hell itself. And the voice said one word:

"DOC-TOR!"


End file.
